Five seconds later a fleet apparition of a prevalent pinkish tone gave a ranging house cat the fright of its life as former darted past latter to vault nimbly up the stone steps of a certain weatherbeaten four-story-and-basement domicile. Set in the door jamb here was a vertical row of mail-slots, and likewise a vertical row of electric push buttons; these objects attesting to the fact that this house, once upon a time the home of a single family, had eventually undergone the transformation which in lower New York befalls so many of its kind, and had become a layer-like succession of light-housekeeping apartments, one apartment to a floor, and the caretaker in the basement.
Since Bob Slack's bachelor quarters were on the topmost floor Bob Slack's push button would be the next to the lowermost of the battery of buttons. A chilled tremulous finger found that particular button and pressed it long and hard, released it, pressed itagain and yet again. And in the interval following each period of pressing the finger's owner hearkened, all ears, for the answering click-click that would tell him the sleeper having been roused by the ringing had risen and pressed the master button that released the mechanism of the street door's lock.
But no welcome clicking rewarded the expectant ringer. Assuredly Bob Slack must be the soundest sleeper in the known world. He who waited rang and rang and rerang. There was no response.
Eventually conviction was forced upon Mr. Leary that he must awaken the caretaker—who, he seemed dimly to recall as a remembrance of past visits to Bob Slack, was a woman; and this done he must induce the caretaker to admit him to the inside of the house. Once within the building the refugee promised himself he would bring the slumberous Slack to consciousness if he had to beat down that individual's door doing it. He centred his attack upon the bottom push button of all. Directly, from almost beneath his feet, came the sound of an areaway window being unlatched, and a drowsy female somewhat crossly inquired to know who might be there and what might be wanted.
"It's a gentleman calling on Mr. Slack," wheezed Mr. Leary with his head over the balusters. He was getting so very, very hoarse. "I've been ringing his bell, but I can't seem to get any answer."
"A gentleman at this time o' night!" The tone was purely incredulous.
"Yes; a close friend of Mr. Slack's," assured Mr. Leary, striving to put stress of urgency into his accents, and only succeeding in imparting an addedhoarseness to his fast-failing vocal cords. "I'm his law partner, in fact. I must see him at once, please—it's very important, very pressing indeed."
"Well, you can't be seein' him."
"C-can't see him? What do you mean?"
"I mean he ain't here, that's what. He's out. He's went out for the night. He's ginerally always out on Friday nights—playin' cards at his club, I think. And sometimes he don't come in till it's near breakfast time. If you're a friend of his I sh'd think it'd be likely you'd know that same."
"Oh, I do—I do," assented Mr. Leary earnestly; "only I had forgotten it. I've had so many other things on my mind. But surely he'll be coming in quite soon now—it's pretty late, you know."
"Don't I know that for myself without bein' told?"
"Yes, quite so, of course; naturally so." Mr. Leary was growing more and more nervous, and more and more chilled, too. "But if you'll only be so very kind as to let me in I'll wait for him in his apartment."
"Let you in without seein' you or knowin' what your business is? I should guess not! Besides, you couldn't be gettin' inside his flat anyways. He's locked it, unless he's forgot to, which ain't likely, him bein' a careful man, and he must a-took the key with him. I know I ain't got it."
"But if you'll just let me inside the building that will be sufficient. I would much rather wait inside if only in the hall, than out here on the stoop in the cold."
"No doubt, no doubt you would all of that." The tone of the unseen female was drily suspicious. "But is it likely I'd be lettin' a stranger into the place, thatI never seen before, and ain't seen yet for that matter, just on the strength of his own word? And him comin' unbeknownst, at this hour of the mornin'? A fat chancet!"
"But surely, though, you must recall me—Mr. Leary, his partner. I've been here before. I've spoken to you."
"That voice don't sound to me like no voice I ever heard."
"I've taken cold—that's why it's altered."
"So? Then why don't you come down here where I can have a look at you and make sure?" inquired this careful chatelaine.
"I'm leaning with my head over the rail of the steps right above you," said Mr. Leary. "Can't you poke your head out and see my face? I'm quite sure you would recall me then."
"With this here iron gratin' acrost me window how could I poke me head out? Besides, it's dark. Say, mister, if you're on the level what's the matter with you comin' down here and not be standin' there palaverin' all the night?"
"I—I—well, you see, I'd rather not come for just a minute—until I've explained to you that—that my appearance may strike you as being a trifle unusual, in fact, I might say, queer," pleaded Mr. Leary, seeking by subtle methods of indirection to prepare her for what must surely follow.
"Never mind explainin'—gimme a look!" The suspicious tenseness in her voice increased. "I tell you this—ayther you come down here right this secont or I shut the window and you can be off or you can go to the divil or go anywheres you please for allof me, because I'm an overworked woman and I need my rest and I've no more time to waste on you."
"Wait, please; I'm coming immediately," called out Mr. Leary.
He forced his legs to carry him down the steps and reluctantly, yet briskly, he propelled his pink-hued person toward the ray of light that streamed out through the grated window-opening and fell across the areaway.
"You mustn't judge by first appearances," he was explaining with a false and transparent attempt at matter-of-factness as he came into the zone of illumination. "I'm not what I seem, exactly. You see, I——"
"Mushiful Evans!" The exclamation was half shrieked, half gasped out; and on the words the window was slammed to, the light within flipped out, and through the glass from within came a vehement warning.
"Get away, you—you lunatic! Get away from here now or I'll have the cops on you."
"But please, please listen," he entreated, with his face close against the bars. "I assure you, madam, that I can explain everything if you will only listen."
There was no mercy, no suggestion of relenting in the threatening message that came back to him.
"If you ain't gone from here in ten seconts I'll ring for the night watchman on the block, and I'll blow a whistle for the police. I've got me hand on the alarm hook right now. Will you go or will I rouse the whole block?"
"Pray be calm, madam, I'll go. In fact, I'm going now."
He fell back out of the areaway. Fresh uproar at this critical juncture would be doubly direful. It would almost certainly bring the vengeful Switzer, with his bruised shanks. It would inevitably bring some one.
Mr. Leary retreated to the sidewalk, figuratively casting from him the shards and potsherds of his reawakened anticipations, now all so rudely shattered again. He was doomed. It would inevitably be his fate to cower in these cold and drafty purlieus until——
No, it wouldn't either!
Like a golden rift in a sable sky a brand-new ray of cheer opened before him. Who were those married friends of Slack's, who lived on the third floor—friends with whom once upon a time he and Slack had shared a chafing-dish supper? What was the name? Brady? No, Braydon. That was it—Mr. and Mrs. Edward Braydon. He would slip back again, on noiseless feet, to the doorway where the bells were. He would bide there until the startled caretaker had gone back to her sleep, or at least to her bed. Then he would play a solo on the Braydons' bell until he roused them. They would let him in, and beyond the peradventure of a doubt, they would understand what seemed to be beyond the ken of flighty and excitable underlings. He would make them understand, once he was in and once the first shock of beholding him had abated within them. They were a kindly, hospitable couple, the Braydons were. They would be only too glad to give him shelter from the elements until BobSlack returned from his session at bridge. He was saved!
Within the coping of the stoop he crouched and waited—waited for five long palpitating minutes which seemed to him as hours. Then he applied an eager and quivering finger to the Braydons' button. Sweet boon of vouchsafed mercy! Almost instantly the latch clicked. And now in another instant Mr. Leary was within solid walls, with the world and the weather shut out behind him.
He stood a moment, palpitant with mute thanksgiving, in the hallway, which was made obscure rather than bright by a tiny pinprick of gaslight; and as thus he stood, fortifying himself with resolution for the embarrassing necessity of presenting himself, in all his show of quaint frivolity, before these comparative strangers, there came floating down the stair well to him in a sharp half-whisper a woman's voice.
"Is that you?" it asked.
"Yes," answered Mr. Leary, truthfully. It was indeed he, Algernon Leary, even though someone else seemingly was expected. But the explanation could wait until he was safely upstairs. Indeed, it must wait. Attempted at a distance it would take on rather a complicated aspect; besides, the caretaker just below might overhear, and by untoward interruptions complicate a position already sufficiently delicate and difficult.
Down from above came the response, "All right then. I've been worried, you were so late coming in, Edward. Please slip in quietly and take the front room. I'm going on back to bed."
"All right!" grunted Mr. Leary.
But already his plan had changed; the second speech down the stair well had caused him to change it. Safety first would be his motto from now on. Seeing that Mr. Edward Braydon apparently was likewise out late it would be wiser and infinitely more discreet on his part did he avoid further disturbing Mrs. Braydon, who presumably was alone and who might be easily frightened. So he would just slip on past the Braydon apartment, and in the hallway on the fourth floor he would cannily bide, awaiting the truant Slack's arrival.
On tiptoe then, flight by flight, he ascended toward the top of the house. He was noiselessly progressing along the hallway of the third floor; he was about midway of it when under his tread a loose plank gave off an agonized squeak, and, as involuntarily he crouched, right at his side a door was flung open.
What the discomfited refugee saw, at a distance from him to be measured by inches rather than by feet, was the face of a woman; and not the face of young Mrs. Edward Braydon, either, but the face of a middle-aged lady with startled eyes widely staring, with a mouth just dropping ajar as sudden horror relaxed her jaw muscles, and with a head of grey hair haloed about by a sort of nimbus effect of curl papers. What the strange lady saw—well, what the strange lady saw may best perhaps be gauged by what she did, and that was instantly to slam and bolt the door and then to utter a succession of calliopelike shrieks, which echoed through the house and which immediately were answered back by a somewhat similar series of outcries from the direction of the basement.
Up the one remaining flight of stairs darted the intruder. He flung himself with all his weight and all his force against Bob Slack's door. It wheezed from the impact, but its stout oaken panels held fast. Who says the impossible is really impossible? The accumulated testimony of the ages shows that given the emergency a man can do anything he just naturally has to do. Neither by training nor by habit of life nor yet by figure was Mr. Leary athletically inclined, but a trained gymnast might well have envied the magnificent agility with which he put a foot upon the doorknob and sprang upward, poising himself there upon a slippered toe, with one set of fingers clutching fast to the minute projections of the door frame while with his free hand he thrust recklessly against the transom.
The transom gave under the strain, moving upward and inward upon its hinges, disclosing an oblong gap above the jamb. With a splendid wriggle the fugitive vaulted up, thrusting his person into the clear space thus provided. Balanced across the opening upon his stomach, half in and half out, for one moment he remained there, his legs kicking wildly as though for a purchase against something more solid than air. Then convulsive desperation triumphed over physical limitations. There was a rending, tearing sound as of some silken fabric being parted biaswise of its fibres, and Mr. Leary's droll after sections vanished inside; and practically coincidentally therewith, Mr. Leary descended upon the rugged floor with a thump which any other time would have stunned him intotemporary helplessness, but which now had the effect merely of stimulating him onward to fresh exertion.
In a fever of activity he sprang up. Pawing a path through the encompassing darkness, stumbling into and over various sharp-cornered objects, barking his limbs with contusions and knowing it not, he found the door of the inner room—Bob Slack's bedroom—and once within that sanctuary he, feeling along the walls, discovered a push bulb and switched on the electric lights.
What matter though the whole house grew clamorous now with a mounting and increasing tumult? What mattered it though he could hear more and more startled voices commingled with the shattering shrieks emanating from the Braydon apartment beneath his feet? He, the hard-pressed and sore-beset and the long-suffering, was at last beyond the sight of mortal eyes. He was locked in, with two rooms and a bath to himself, and he meant to maintain his present refuge, meant to hold this fort against all comers, until Bob Slack came home. He would barricade himself in if need be. He would pile furniture against the doors. If they took him at all it would be by direct assault and overpowering numbers.
And while he withstood siege and awaited attack he would rid himself of these unlucky caparisons that had been his mortification and his undoing. When they broke in on him—if they did break in on him—he would be found wearing some of Bob Slack's clothes. Better far to be mistaken for a burglar than to be dragged forth lamentably yet fancifully attired as Himself at the Age of Three. The one thing might be explained—and in time would be; but the other?He felt that he was near the breaking point; that he could no more endure.
He stopped where he was, in the middle of the room, with his eyes and his hands seeking for the seams of the closing of his main garment. Then he remembered what in his stress he had forgotten—the opening or perhaps one should say the closing was at the back. He twisted his arms rearward, his fingers groping along his spine.
Now any normal woman has the abnormal ability to do and then to undo a garment hitching behind. Nature, which so fashioned her elbows that she cannot throw a stone at a hen in the way in which a stone properly should be thrown at a hen, made suitable atonement for this articular oversight by endowing her joints with the facile knack of turning on exactly the right angle, with never danger of sprain or dislocation, for the subjugation of a back-latching frock. Moreover, years of practice have given her adeptness in accomplishing this achievement, so that to her it has become an everyday feat. But man has neither the experience to qualify him nor yet the bodily adaptability.
By reaching awkwardly up and over his shoulder Mr. Leary managed to tug the topmost button of his array of buttons out of its attendant buttonholes, but below and beyond that point he could not progress. He twisted and contorted his body; he stretched his arms in their sockets until twin pangs of agony met and crossed between his shoulder blades, and with his two exploring hands he pulled and fumbled and pawedand wrenched and wrested, to make further headway at his task. But the sewing-on had been done with stout thread; the buttonholes were taut and snug and well made. Those slippery flat surfaces amply resisted him. They eluded him; defied him; outmastered him. Thanks be to, or curses be upon, the passionate zeal of Miss Rowena Skiff for exactitudes, he, lacking the offices of an assistant undresser, was now as definitely and finally inclosed in this distressful pink garment as though it had been his own skin. Speedily he recognised this fact in all its bitter and abominable truth, but mechanically, he continued to wrestle with the obdurate fastenings.
While he thus vainly contended, events in which he directly was concerned were occurring beneath that roof. From within his refuge he heard the sounds of slamming doors, of hurrying footsteps, of excited voices merging into a distracted chorus; but above all else, and from the rest, two of these voices stood out by reason of their augmented shrillness, and Mr. Leary marked them both, for since he had just heard them he therefore might identify their respective unseen owners.
"There's something—there's somebody in the house!" At the top of its register one voice was repeating the warning over and over again, and judging by direction this alarmist was shrieking her words through a keyhole on the floor below him. "I saw it—him—whatever it was. I opened my door to look out in the hall and it—he—was right there. Oh, I could have touched him! And then it ran and I didn't see him any more and I slammed the door and began screaming."
"You seen what?"
The strident question seemed to come from far below, down in the depths of the house, where the caretaker abided.
"Whatever it was. I opened the door and he was right in the hall there glaring at me. I could have touched it. And then he ran and I——"
"What was he like? I ast what was he like—it's that I'm astin' you!" The janitress was the one who pressed for an answer.
For the moment the question, pointed though it was, went unanswered. The main speaker—shrieker, rather—was plainly a person with a mania for details, and even in this emergency she intended, as now developed, to present all the principal facts in the case, and likewise all the incidental facts so far as these fell within her scope of knowledge.
"I was awake," she clarioned through the keyhole, speaking much faster than any one following this narrative can possibly hope to read the words. "I couldn't sleep. I never do sleep well when I'm in a strange house. And anyhow, I was all alone. My nephew by marriage—Mr. Edward Braydon, you know—had gone out with the gentleman who lives on the floor above to play cards, and he said he was going to be gone nearly all night, and my niece—I'm Mrs. Braydon's unmarried aunt from Poughkeepsie and I'm down here visiting them—my niece was called to Long Island yesterday by illness—it's her sister who's ill with something like the bronchitis. And he was gone and so she was gone, and so here I was all alone and he told me not to stay up for him, but I couldn't sleep well—I never can sleep in a strange house—and just a fewminutes ago I heard the bell ring and I supposed he had forgotten to take his latchkey with him, and so I got up to let him in. And I called down the stairs and asked him if it was him and he answered back. But it didn't sound like his voice. But I didn't think anything of that. But, of course, it was out of the ordinary for him to have a voice like that. But all the same I went back to bed. But he didn't come in and I was just getting up again to see what detained him—his voice really sounded so strange I thought then he might have been taken sick or something. But just as I got to the door a plank creaked and I opened the door and there it was right where I could have touched him. And then it ran—and oh, what if——"
"I'm astin' you once more what it was like?"
"How should I know except that——"
"Was it a big, fat, wild, bare-headed, scary, awful-lookin' scoundrel dressed in some kind of funny pink clothes?"
"Yes, that's it! That's him—he was all sort of pink. Oh, did you see him too? Oh, is it a burglar?"
"Burglar nothin'! It's a ravin', rampagin' lunatic—that's what it is!"
"Oh, my heavens, a lunatic!"
"Sure it is. He tried to git me to let him in and——"
"Oh, whatever shall we do!"
"Hey, what's all the excitement about?"
A new and deeper voice here broke into the babel, and Mr. Leary recognising it at a distance, where he stood listening—but not failing, even while he listened,to strive unavailingly with his problem of buttons—knew he was saved. Knowing this he nevertheless retreated still deeper into the inner room. The thought of spectators in numbers remained very abhorrent to him. So he did not hear all that happened next, except in broken snatches.
He gathered though, from what he did hear, that Bob Slack and Mr. Edward Braydon were coming up the stairs, and that a third male whom they called Officer was coming with them, and that the janitress was coming likewise, and that divers lower-floor tenants were joining in the march, and that as they came the janitress was explaining to all and sundry how the weird miscreant had sought to inveigle her into admitting him to Mr. Slack's rooms, and how she had refused, and how with maniacal craft—or words to that effect—he had, nevertheless, managed to secure admittance to the house, and how he must still be in the house. And through all her discourse there were questions from this one or that, crossing its flow but in no-wise interrupting it; and through it all percolated hootingly the terrorised outcries of Mr. Braydon's maiden aunt-in-law, issuing through the keyhole of the door behind which she cowered. Only now she was interjecting a new harassment into the already complicated mystery by pleading that someone repair straightway to her and render assistance, as she felt herself to be on the verge of fainting dead away.
With searches into closets and close scrutiny of all dark corners passed en route, the procession advanced to the top floor, mainly guided in its oncoming by the clew deduced from the circumstances of the mad intruder having betrayed a desire to secure access to Mr.Slack's apartment, with the intention, as the caretaker more than once suggested on her way up, of murdering Mr. Slack in his bed. Before the ascent had been completed she was quite certain this was the correct deduction, and so continued to state with all the emphasis of which she was capable.
"He couldn't possibly have got downstairs again," somebody hazarded; "so he must be upstairs here still—must be right round here somewhere."
"Didn't I tell you he was lookin' for Mr. Slack to lay in wait for him and destroy the poor man in his bed?" shrilled the caretaker.
"Watch carefully now, everybody. He might rush out of some corner at us."
"Say, my transom's halfway open!" Mr. Bob Slack exclaimed. "And, by Jove, there's a light shining through it yonder from the bedroom. He's inside—we've got him cornered, whoever he is."
Boldly Mr. Slack stepped forward and rapped hard on the door.
"Better step on out peaceably," he called, "because there's an officer here with us and we've got you trapped."
"It's me, Bob, it's me," came in a wheezy, plaintive wail from somewhere well back in the apartment.
"Who's me?" demanded Mr. Slack, likewise forgetting his grammar in the thrill of this culminating moment.
"Algy—Algernon Leary."
"Not with that voice, it isn't. But I'll know in a minute who it is!" Mr. Slack reached pocketward for his keys.
"Better be careful. He might have a gun or something on him."
"Nonsense!" retorted Mr. Slack, feeling very valiant. "I'm not afraid of any gun. But you ladies might stand aside if you're frightened. All ready, officer? Now then!"
"Please come in by yourself, Bob. Don't—don't let anybody else come with you!"
If he heard the faint and agonised appeal from within Mr. Slack chose not to heed it. He found the right key on his key ring, applied it to the lock, turned the bolt and shoved the door wide open, giving back then in case of an attack. The front room was empty. Mr. Slack crossed cautiously to the inner room and peered across the threshold into it, Mr. Braydon and a grey-coated private watchman and a procession of half-clad figures following along after him.
Where was the mysterious intruder? Ah, there he was, huddled up in a far corner alongside the bed as though he sought to hide himself away from their glaring eyes. And at the sight of what he beheld Mr. Bob Slack gave one great shocked snort of surprise, and then one of recognition.
For all that the cowering wretch wore a quaint garment of a bright and watermelonish hue, except where it was streaked with transom dust and marked with ash-can grit; for all that his head was bare, and his knees, and a considerable section of his legs as well; for all that he had white socks and low slippers, now soaking wet, upon his feet; for all his elbow sleeves and his pink garters and his low neck; and finally for allthat his face was now beginning, as they stared upon it, to wear the blank wan look of one who is about to succumb to a swoon of exhaustion induced by intense physical exertion or by acutely prolonged mental strain or by both together—Mr. Bob Slack detected in this fabulous oddity a resemblance to his associate in the practice of law at Number Thirty-two Broad Street.
"In the name of heaven, Leary——" he began.
But a human being can stand just so many shocks in a given number of minutes—just so many and no more. Gently, slowly, the gartered legs gave way, bending outward, and as their owner collapsed down upon his side with the light of consciousness flickering in his eyes, his figure was half-turned to them, and they saw how that he was ornamentally but securely buttoned down the back with many large buttons and how that with a last futile fluttering effort of his relaxing hands he fumbled first at one and then at another of these buttons.
"Leary, what in thunder have you been doing? And where on earth have you been?" Mr. Slack shot the questions forth as he sprang to his partner's side and knelt alongside the slumped pink shape.
Languidly Mr. Leary opened one comatose eye. Then he closed it again and the wraith of a smile formed about his lips, and just as he went sound asleep upon the floor Mr. Slack caught from Mr. Leary the softly whispered words, "I've been the life of the party!"