We were all upon our feet, and now Reid, with a curt nod of farewell, turned away with his companion. I stepped to his other side.
"One moment," I said. "I want to know a little more about this before I drop it; and right here is as good a place as any."
"Can't just now, Crosby." He motioned me away nervously. "Not possible. See you up in the country any time, and tell you all you want. Not here," and he moved toward the door.
"You can't help yourself," said I, "and I won't keep you long. Sit down again, please." He had lugged out his watch. "You'll have to miss your train, but there are plenty more."
The giant scowled at me with obvious willingness to begin a disturbance then and there; and Reid glanced hesitatingly from the one to the other of us, his impulse printed plain upon his face.
"Certainly," I put in, "you can get rid of me inthat way, for the moment, if it's worth your while. Make up your mind—you're the doctor."
He started angrily, flushing to the roots of his close-cropped hair; and I thought for an instant that I had mistaken my man. Then the melodrama oozed out of him. He dismissed the unwilling bully with a whispered word or two, and sat sullenly down across the table.
"I'll make it as short as you please," I retorted. "Carucci's wife is sent down to see that he sails. I'm sent down to see that she makes good. Now you come down and have him shanghaied. Was this your own idea, or were you—"
"No. My own initiative entirely. Only practical way of making sure that he went. Best to see to it personally. Always better to do the thing yourself, and then you know it's done."
"I understand, then, that Mr. Tabor didn't suggest this to you?"
"Exactly. Tabor knows nothing about it. My own idea altogether." His triumph in his own efficiency was overriding his annoyance. "Better say nothing to him whatever. He has enough to think of. Always best to avoid trouble. The man's gone, and there's an end to it. Is that all?"
So Reid's own fear of Carucci had been intense enough to drive him to this dirty alternative rather than trust to our sending the man safely away. There was something unnatural here.
"Not quite," I said. "Of course, you know the exact nature of the fellow's blackmailing story?"
"Certainly. Pack of lies. Won't discuss it. Utterly absurd, the whole thing, but we can't have it go any further."
"Precisely, and it won't go any further, now. What I want to know is the foundation for it. You must see the reason for my knowing that much of the facts, and for trusting me with them. If there is any entanglement—"
"Look here, Crosby," Reid leaned forward across the table, his face scarlet and working, "that'll do. I don't propose to sift over my life with you. Not for a minute. What's more, if we could afford a row, I'd punch your head for having the assurance to repeat that infernal slander to my face. That's all, you understand? That's all."
"There's plenty of time for that," I said, lowering my voice instinctively, as I felt my own temper slipping. "I'll ask you just one more question. On your word, is Miriam Tabor alive, or not?"
I never saw a man so broken by a word. He turned from red to greenish white, the perspiration shining on his forehead; and for a moment it seemed that he could not speak. Then he dragged the words out hoarsely and unnaturally.
"You've taken a damned cowardly advantage—Miriam Tabor was my wife, and she's dead. Now are you satisfied? Because I'm not."
There was nothing to add. I rose in silence, and we made our way to the door. On the sidewalk, he waited for me to choose my direction; then without a word, turned pointedly in the opposite one, and walked quickly away.
I set out for the Carucci tenement in a state of no great comfort. By forcing a scene I had gained nothing; and I had made an overt enemy of Doctor Reid. Not that I was particularly concerned over that development; I had never liked the man from the first; and I was impressed not so much by what he had said as by his open and disproportionate confusion. Think what I might of my own side of the affair, Reid had confessed to a personal concern with Carucci; he had flown into a rage upon my asking for an explanation; and the name of Miriam had stricken him like a blow. He had told menothing, after all, and had made me the more anxious over what he refused to tell. If he had been absolutely in the right, I had done nothing worse than to touch upon a grief brutally; and he would have said precisely what he did say if I had been justified and he had been lying. Well, Carucci was out of reach, and Reid worse than silenced. What chance remained to me of an answer to my problem depended upon Sheila.
I had no time to doubt if I should find her; for her window was lighted up, and she herself plainly to be seen, leaning far out to watch the street below as I turned the corner. When I was still half way up the block, she called to me by name, bidding me come up at once; and I answered as I picked my way along, trying to reassure her. The scene for a moment resembled a ludicrous burlesque of a serenade; nor did the street miss anything of its humor. With one accord the women in the doorways, the lounging men about the lamps and the scurrying screaming groups of youngsters underfoot caught up the implication, and began a babel of jocose advice and criticism in a dozen languages. And although I understood but little of it, and was somewhat preoccupied with graver matters, yet Iwas fain to dive hurriedly into the doorway with a heated and tingling countenance. The little room was itself again, save for a dull spot upon the clean-scrubbed boards; and the canary in the window paused in a burst of singing as I entered.
"Sheila," I said, "I am very much afraid you won't like my news."
"Well, sir, what's happened him?" she asked briefly.
"You're right," I answered. "It's your husband, but it's nothing to be alarmed about, nothing at all dangerous. You must—"
"For the love av God, don't thry to break things to me, sir. Speak right out. He's not hurt, ye say; well, he's pinched then, I suppose."
"No, it's not the police. He's been shanghaied, if you know what that means."
"Crimped? It's thrue for ye, I know; 'tis twice before he's been, but who done it I never could tell. Av I thought anny av my folk that's afraid av his silly tongue wud do that dhirty thrick—" she stopped short, her strong face working.
I was rather angry myself. "Well, Sheila, I don't believe they had anything to do with it before; but it was Doctor Reid who had it done to-day. Iwas there, but it was over before I understood what was going on."
"Reid? I shud ha' known 'twas Reid, the shamblin' scun he is, an' small good them that loved him best ever had av him! Now, the divil hould his dhirty little pinch av a soul! For why shud he harm my man?"
"That's what I want to know," I said. "He's afraid of what Antonio says about him, and you know—"
"As far as his story ever goes it'll harm no man," she burst out, "they know well he's all bark an' no bite, if they weren't all crazy-afraid together, an' a truer man anny day than that blagyard body-snatchin' pill-roller. His own guilty heart it is, whisperin' over his shoulder, an' me poor lamb that he married an' murthered, and the child av his own body on the one day! An' the poor mother they're callin' crazy, with the soul av the daughter she cudn't let free standin' between her an' the sunshine. Crazy she'll never be until they make her so, with their doctors an' questions an' whispers, an' that death-fetch Reid grinnin' before her face, with the blood not dhry on him!" She paused for breath, walking up and down the room and twisting her hands.
"Sit down, Sheila," I said, "you know this is absurd. I'm trying to get a little truth about people we both care for; and if you say things like that, how can you expect me to believe anything?" But my knees were trembling as I spoke.
"Mudhered it was all the same," she said sullenly, dropping back into a chair nevertheless. "When a docthor with all the learnin' that goes beyond the knowledge av a woman lets his wife die an' an innocent mite av a new-born baby go down to the grave with her, 'tis black murder it is, no less. How could she rest quiet after that, an' half her life callin' to her, an' the mother that wouldn't let her go, an' had the power to see? 'Tis no docthor she wants, but a priest, an' no medicine but a handful av holy wather, like my own sister's cousin Nora that used to sit an' talk with her lad that was dead evenin's by the byre wall, an' Father Tracy came behind an' sprinkled the two av thim, the one he could see an' the one he could not see."
"Who was it that died?" I asked sharply. "Was it Miriam? Did Reid lie to me when he said so, or did Carucci lie when he said that Reid was married to Lady?"
She grew suddenly quiet and cautious, as if shehad said too much already, and must weigh her words.
"Reid told ye the truth for once," she muttered. "'Twas Antonio lied."
"Then Miriam was his wife, and Lady—"
"Yes," she answered, "it was Miriam," but she did not meet my eyes. Then she went on hastily, before I could speak again.
"Ye see, sir, 'twas like this: When Miriam died, her mother's heart nearly went with her, an' so because the poor dear loved her more than enough, she did not go quite away. 'Tis so some whiles, when the livin' holds too close by the dead. She used to talk to her, an' when the villain that let her die got doctors an' looked like judgment, an' said my poor soul was wrong in her head, an' ought to be taken away, an' they moved her out there in the counthry where they had no friends, an' kept her hidden as if there was a shame upon her, sure the lovin' soul of the dead girl followed her mother. They said she was crazy when she made them move her daughter's room, an' keep it up in the new house as it had been in the old, an' would sit an' talk to her there. Sure, 'twas no sign at all, an' a black lie in Reid's black heart to set the husband an' the daughter again'her. Some folks are that way, that can see the fairy folk an' the goblins, an' speak with the wandherin' dead. A good priest Mrs. Tabor should have when the power tires her, an' not a lyin' schemin' brute av a docthor that wants to put her away. 'Twas not much at first anyhow. But he turned their heads with his talk av asylums an' horrors to lead them away from his own wickedness."
"Is that the secret, then?" I asked. "Is the trouble no more than their fear that Mrs. Tabor is insane?"
"Secret? What secret? There's no secret they have at all, only a wicked lie." She was growing careful again. "'Tis all that docthor that's never happy but doin' harm. She's no more crazy than meself, an' no one thinks nor fears it, not even him. They only say so, because—" She stopped herself again.
"Sheila," I said, "tell me just one thing. How much truth is there in what your husband says?"
"How do I know what he says?" She was watching me closely, as if to see that I followed her words. "He's dhrunk half the time, poor divil, an' he says one thing to-day an' one to-morrow. Never ye mind him, sir."
"But there must have been something for him togo on," I persisted. "Did Reid have some affair abroad before his marriage, or not?"
She hesitated, her apparent hatred of Reid struggling with her loyalty to the family and her recovered caution.
"There was some matther av a woman in Germany," she said at last, reluctantly, "but I never rightly knew about it, nor Antonio either." Then more rapidly: "An' it's angry I've been, Mr. Crosby, an' 'tis like I've said more meself than I mean." She paused.
"Has that nothing to do with the trouble in the family? Sheila, you know I'm their good friend, and I'm not merely gossiping. You must have seen—" for the life of me I could not go on.
"I'll say no more," she answered obstinately. "It's weary I am for you, an' the poor darlin' that's bewitched ye, but—" her eyes filled, and she shut her mouth with a snap. Say what I would after that, I could not move her. She had said enough already, and she trusted a gentleman like me that it should go no further. That was all.
"Sheila," I said, as I rose to go, "is all you have told me true?"
"Thrue?" she started as if I had struck her."Yes, it's thrue—an' sorrow fell them that made it so."
I took up my hat and stick from the table.
"We will have another talk about this some day, Sheila," I said. And I closed the door behind me.
For the next few days I think I must have been nearer to a nervous breakdown than I am ever likely to be again. All the strain and the anxiety of the whole summer seemed to fall upon me in a mass; I had not the relief of taking arms against my trouble, nor of any better business than to brood and to remember, sifting misery by the hour in hopeless search after some grain of decision; and the heat and hurry of the city broke my natural sleep, and went to make a nightmare of my days. Maclean was with me a good deal, taking me with him into strange corners of the town, and trying his best to bring me out of myself; but I could not talk to him of what was on my mind, and the irritation of constant pretense to carelessness vitiated much of the relief he tried to give. Wherever I might be to appearance, the same Spartan Fox was at my breast—Carucci's story and Sheila's attemptedcontradiction, and the ambiguous trouble that overhung Lady and shut me out from her. I could not fathom it; and I dared not take dangerous action in the dark. Reid had passed through some scandal before his marriage; Sheila had admitted so much; and her denial that Miriam and Lady were the same had been involved in such a maze of surmise and superstition, so evidently and angrily put forward as a defense, that I could not believe what I would of it. It might well be that Mrs. Tabor was oppressed even to insanity by the situation. But what was the situation? If the mother's madness of bereavement were at the root of all, what had the family to conceal? Or why should not the remaining daughter marry whom she chose? Sheila's explanation of the first was absurdly tenuous; and the last she had not attempted to explain. No, there was one shadow over them all: the cause of the mother's grief was the cause of the daughter's terror, and of the irrational behavior of the sane and practical men of the family. I could find no alternative; either Mrs. Tabor was haunted by mediæval ghosts, or some part of the scandal must be true.
At last, one unbearably humid morning, when I was almost on the point of going blindly out toStamford on the chance of any happening that might let my anxiety escape into action, of any opportunity that might force a climax, Mr. Tabor called me on the telephone.
"Hello, Mr. Crosby? Mr. Laurence Crosby?—Well, Crosby, this is Mr. Tabor talking. Are you free this morning, so that you can give us a few hours of your time? You can help us very much if you will."
"Certainly; I'll be out as soon as I can get a train." The idea of seeing Lady again was a compensation under any circumstances; but the next words destroyed that hope.
"No, don't do that. What I want of you is right there in New York." He hesitated a moment. "Hello—that—that same situation which occurred the other day, when you were alone in the house, and we were in town, has arisen again. You understand me?—We're looking after this neighborhood. The person in question has been gone an hour, leaving no word; may have gone to New York. Now, will you meet all trains until further notice, and keep your eyes open? Call us up about every half hour. In case of success, use your own judgment—don't excite any one, don't be left behind, and telephoneas soon as possible. Am I making this explicit enough?"
"Yes, perfectly. I'm to meet trains, let matters take their own course as far as possible, keep in touch, and let you know."
"That's it exactly. I knew we could count on you."
I was not many minutes in getting to the Grand Central, laying my plan of action on the way. To be sure that no one arrived unobserved in that great labyrinth of tracks and exits was no such easy matter, even though I knew the point of departure. I began by a thorough search of the waiting-rooms. Then, finding, as I had expected, no trace of Mrs. Tabor, I learned the times and positions of all the Stamford trains, and set myself to meet each one as it arrived. I had to make certain of seeing every passenger, and at the same time to keep out of the expectant throng that crowded close to the restraining ropes on a similar errand; for if Mrs. Tabor should appear I must not seem to be watching for her. The next hour and a half was divided between studying the clock, running my eyes dizzily over streams of hurrying humanity, racing anxiously from place to place when a late train crowded close upon its successor,and snatching a moment at the telephone in the intervals of nervous waiting. Even so, I could not be morally sure that she might not slip by me somewhere unnoticed. And when at last I recognized her fragile figure far down the long platform, I was less excited than relieved.
She came on quickly, carrying a little shopping-bag, and stepping with a certain bird-like alertness. It was hard to imagine that this eager, pretty lady, with her spun-glass hair and her bright eyes, could be either ill or in trouble. I let her pass me, and followed at a little distance into the waiting-room; then crossed over and met her face to face by the telephone booths on the west side. Her greeting was a fresh surprise.
"Why, Mr. Crosby, this is delightfully fortunate! I was just going to call you up, and here you spring from the earth as if I had rubbed a magic ring. You must have known that I was thinking about you. You're not going away, are you? Or meeting any one?"
If she meant anything in particular, I had reason to feel embarrassed; but the big, childish eyes that smiled into my own seemed wholly innocent of suspicion.
"No," I said. "I've been seeing somebody off, and I'm very gladly at your service for as long as you like." I was praying Heaven to inspire me with mendacity.
"Well, that's the best that could have happened. I came in town to see some friends, and I promised myself to see you at the same time. Excuse me just half a minute, while I telephone them."
She slipped into the booth, leaving me hesitating outside. Evidently here was my chance to call up Mr. Tabor, and report; but she kept glancing out at me through the glass doors as she talked, quite casually, but still with observant interest; and I dared not shut myself in a booth lest she should either suspect or escape. She was out again before I could make up my mind.
"Now take me to lunch," she said gaily, "and after that, if you haven't grown tired of such a frivolous old creature, you may take me where I am going. I'll set you free by two or three o'clock, at the latest."
I took her to the Waldorf, for no better reason than that it was cool and close at hand; wondering all the way how in the world I was to get word to the family, and keeping up my end rather absentlyin a conversation, which with a younger woman would have been merrily flirtatious, and wanted only relief from preoccupied anxiety to be very delightful fencing. Mrs. Tabor was in that state of fluffy exhilaration, that heightening and brightening of spirit which in a man would have been hilarity, and which in a woman may equally well mean the excitement of pleasure or the tension of imprisoned pain. She was a little above herself, but there was absolutely nothing to tell me why. And she kept me too busy in finding the next answer to plan what I should do the minute afterward.
"Of course, Mr. Crosby," she began when we were settled at our table, "this is another of my horrible and mysterious disappearances. I've actually come to the great city, in broad daylight, without a chaperon. Isn't it reckless of me?"
"Desperately," I answered. "And not a soul knows where you are? Won't they be shocked and surprised when they miss you?"
She shook out a little laugh. "Let them; it's their own fault. If I'm to be treated like an European school-girl, I shall at least have the pleasure of acting like one. They need imagination enough to conceive of my being able to take care of myselfnow and then. I'm not in my second childhood yet—only in my second girlhood."
"At least let me telephone them that you're with me. I won't say why or where, and we can make a mystery of that."
"Not a bit of it." Her voice sharpened just a trifle. "That would spoil the whole lesson. They needn't worry unless they choose. Then when I come home, if they make a fuss over me I shall say: 'Now see how silly you've been. I've been having luncheon with Mr. Crosby,' You wouldn't take the edge off of that disclosure?" She tilted her head on one side.
"But they ought to know merely that you're safe," I ventured.
"Safe? What should I be but safe? No—" She put out an emphatic little hand. "I'm free from the convent, and I'm not going to be taken to task by so young and good-looking a confessor. Besides, I'm ashamed of you. Where's your gallantry? You don't seem to appreciate the honor of our secret at all."
"Perhaps the trouble is," I said cautiously, "that I don't understand the secret myself. What did you mean when you said—"
"Oh,that!" she laughed. "Why, I meant the hardest thing in the world for a man to understand, and that is—just nothing at all. You had all of you been so stupid and serious and uncomfortable that night that I felt it would serve you right to make you jump. So I made a little mystery of my own, and it worked beautifully. It sounded every bit as sensible as yours, too."
And there he stood on the sidewalkAnd there he stood on the sidewalk
She was beyond me. Two or three times after that I worked around to the same subject, but she evaded me so deftly that I could not for the life of me be sure whether it was evasion or unconsciousness; and my attempts to communicate with the family met with no better fortune. At last I tried to leave her for a moment on the plea of calling a taxicab.
"You live on Table Mountain, and your name is Truthful James," was her comment. "Taxicabs are scarce in Stamford, Mr. Crosby, and it would take too long to get one here. Let the waiter call one of those outside."
At that, I gave up with a good grace. I should be free to report as soon as I had left her with her friends, and a few minutes more or less could not matter much by now. She gave the chauffeur anaddress in the sixties and we were presently there: one of these new American basement houses sandwiched in among the older brownstone fronts of the more conservative blocks. During the short drive, she had been silent and I thought a little disturbed; but her farewell was bright with reawakened gaiety.
"I shall measure your enjoyment by your secrecy, Mr. Confessor," she purred, with tilted head and raised forefinger. "You may tell my anxious warders just as much as you please, and the less you confide in them the more I shall flatter myself of your confidence in me. Now I leave you to your conscience."
She was standing in the doorway, her hand upon the bell, and I had turned back to the waiting taxicab, when a somber and respectable electric brougham turned the corner and drew slowly up to the curb. I recognized with an uncomfortable shock that the driver was no other than the Tabors' former chauffeur, the unworthy Thomas who had deserted Lady and myself at the crisis of our midnight adventure; and I thought that under his mask of the impassive servant he recognized me somewhat uncomfortably. I glanced back to see if Mrs. Tabor had seen him also. She was leaning against the door of the house, clutching at the handle as iffor support, or in a desperate anxiety to enter; every line of her face and figure writhing and agonized with unmistakable terror. The bang of the brougham door behind me and the sound of a shrill precise voice that I remembered made me turn my eyes to the street—and as I did so the bang of the front door sounded behind me like an echo. Mrs. Tabor had disappeared into the house, the brougham was starting rapidly away, and there on the sidewalk stood the man whom Reid had twice brought secretly home.
I had my first good look at him while he moved deliberately past me and up to the door of the house: A man past middle age, in frock-coat and silk hat in spite of the season, heavy without portliness, a figure of an elderly athlete. A shock of iron-gray hair brushed the back of his collar, and his face was a face to ponder over, a face at once square and aquiline, broad forehead, predatory nose, and the massive lips and jawbones of a conqueror, clear-cut under a skin of creamy ivory. He might have been a Roman emperor in time-worn marble. While I stood irresolute, wondering whether to follow, and on what pretext I should do so, the door swung open and he passed ponderously within; and the next instant Mrs. Tabor appeared at the ground-floor window, motioning to me frantically. I came forward, but she as franticallywaved me back, and seemed to indicate by her gestures that I was to keep the taxicab where it was. A moment later she slipped out of the door like a fugitive, ran across the sidewalk, and fell in a heap inside the cab, crying: "Take me away, quickly! Oh, take me away!"
I directed the astonished driver to the Grand Central, and sprang in beside her. She was very pale and breathing in sobbing gasps; and remembering her weak heart, I was alarmed almost for her life. But she began to recover as soon as we were fairly in motion, and by the time we had gone a few blocks was apparently beyond the immediate danger of collapse. She was still, however, pitifully pale and shaken, clutching unconsciously at my arm, and whispering: "That man—that man—" like a frightened child.
"Whom do you mean?" I asked. "Not the chauffeur? He went the other way as soon as you were inside."
"Chauffeur? No, what chauffeur? I mean the old man that came in after me. He comes after me everywhere. I can't get away from him. Is he coming now?" She tried to look out of the window.
"There's no one coming," I said blindly. "Hesent his car away, and he couldn't follow us if he tried. It's all right."
"Really? Are you quite sure?" She sat up, and began setting her hair to rights with little aimless pats and pushes. "You must think me ill or crazy, Mr. Crosby," she went on with a faint smile, "but if you could only understand, you would see that I'm not so absurd as I seem."
"But who is he?"
"He's the worst of them all. He's the head of it. My own people would hear reason if it weren't for him. He knows—oh, he knows all the things that nobody ought to. He doesn't want me ever to see Miriam— I can't get away from him. I can't possibly get away from him." She was growing hysterical again, and I dared not let her go on, much as I wanted to hear more.
"He isn't here, anyway," I said. "He isn't anywhere about, and he isn't coming, and you have got away from him this time. And I'm going to take you safe home and see that no one troubles you any more."
I felt that I was talking like a fool, but my reassurance, fatuous as it was, had its suggestive effect. She grew steadier, and I was able to lead her mindaway from its terror, until, as we reached the station, she had become almost like herself.
"Mr. Crosby," she said as the cab stopped, "you've done me a difficult service very tactfully, and you are a wonderful nurse; I'm really quite myself now, and there's no need at all of your coming home with me. But I want you to understand a little why I had such an absurd shock. That man is insane, and I'm afraid of him. But I can't make the family believe it."
I tried to pay the least possible attention. "I'd better come with you anyhow," I said carelessly, "just to be on hand. There's no harm in having a man along."
She protested that she was quite well, and that there was not the slightest occasion for my trouble. And indeed, she was so marvelously recovered that it was hard for me to believe my own memory of the last few minutes: the oppression had passed from her as a slate is cleared by a sponge, and there was hardly a sign of visible nervousness to show that she had been excited. Nevertheless, I could not leave her so, though I was racking my brain for an explanation, and raging at the responsibility which prevented me from hurrying back to seek it.As I was buying the tickets, a god from the machine appeared in the person of Sheila, armed for travel and looking more anxious than ourselves. She took possession of the older woman like a nurse discovering a lost child.
"Here ye are on your way home again," she cried, "an' me thinkin' I'd have to go all the way out alone on the hot thrain, with no one better than meself. That man of mine's off to sea, Mrs. Tabor, an' Miss Margaret sent me word to come back an' make meself useful. But ye'd be knowin' that already. Ye're only in the city for the day?"
"Mrs. Tabor and I have been lunching together," I said, "and it seemed so hot in town that I hardly liked to have her go home alone."
"Ye've been—" Sheila shot a quick glance at me. "Well, there'll be no need, Mr. Crosby, unless ye were to come to Stamford yourself anyway," and she began to inquire volubly after the health of the family.
Mrs. Tabor turned to me. "There really is nothing for you to do, Mr. Crosby, except to come soon and see me again," she said brightly. "I'm quite well, and I'm in safe hands, as you see—"
So far as I could tell, she was right; and I hadno further need of overriding dismissal. I saw them both safely on the train, and hurried back; resolved to reach the bottom of at least this new mystery before I slept that night. My telephone call was answered by Reid, upon whom I wasted no unnecessary words, telling him only that Mrs. Tabor had been continuously with me, and was now on her way home in charge of Sheila.
"Why on earth didn't you 'phone before?" he snapped.
"Couldn't," said I shortly. "Good-by," and I raced for the subway.
A north-bound express was just leaving, and I had barely time to squeeze inside the door. The nearest station to the house would be Sixty-sixth Street; but by taking the express to Seventy-second, and running back on a local, I should save time. I hung on my strap, fidgeting with impatience while we howled through the clashing darkness and flashed past the blurred brilliancy of the stations. As we passed Sixty-sixth Street, a local drew out in the same direction as ourselves, running for a moment side by side with us before it fell behind. Its rows of lighted windows balanced almost within reach; and close inside, in one of the cross-seatsamidships of the car, sat the man whose mere presence had so terrified Mrs. Tabor.
There was no mistaking that face, even if the silk hat and formal frock-coat had not been at that season almost an identification in themselves. I could as soon have mistaken Ibsen or Napoleon appearing before me in the flesh. The massive head was bent forward thoughtfully, and one broad white hand lay loose along the window-sill. I noticed a plain gold ring on the little finger. Then, as the express began to slacken speed, the window moved slowly past me and out of sight ahead. I had a strong sense of having seen the face many times before, though, try as I would, I could not fit it to a name. He was either some person well enough known to have his picture often in print or else the striking distinction of his features had given me that impression.
The local was standing at the platform as we drew into Seventy-second Street, and I pushed out and across to it with small regard for the amenities of the crowded station. A score of people, it seemed, were possessed of personal designs to block my way. I dodged a chanticleer hat, caromed off a hot and angry commuter or so, and found myselfscrambling at the tail of the impatient cluster before the sliding-doors.
"Little lively, please!" roared the guard. "Lennux 'n West Farms, local train! Both gates!"
I did my best, but there were too many ahead of me. Even as I reached for that grip on the door-casing, which meant the right to squeeze inside, the door clicked shut before my face; and two dull clanks of the gong sealed my disappointment. I ran wildly along the train, trying to overtake the relay of sliding doors and jangling bells; but it was of no use. Then for an infuriating minute or two the train stood still, locked and inviolable, while the station alarm chattered overhead, and through the gleaming window I could see my man sitting calmly in his place. As it creaked out into the darkness, another express growled in behind me; and I had still presence of mind enough to slip aboard. My one chance was that we might overtake that local in a favorable spot.
Seventy-ninth and Eighty-sixth Streets blurred past without a sign. Then a little beyond the latter I caught sight of the local, and gradually we drew alongside. He was still there, drumming idly on the window-pane with his white fingers, and lookingdisinterestedly straight across at me. I had a momentary impulse to conceal my face, until I remembered that he had never seen me. So for a second we stared at each other, pursuer and pursued, the one utterly unconscious of the other. My train passed forward with increasing speed, while I counted the cars—one—two—three—he was in the fourth. Either he must come into Ninety-sixth Street or get off at Ninety-first; and the chances were in favor of my finding him still in the train at Ninety-sixth.
I got out there, crossed over to the local platform, and waited. When the train came in, I was opposite the fourth car. The center seat was empty, and I sought in vain among the passengers thronging to the doors. Then I hurried back ahead of the crowd, and from before the ticket window ran my eyes again over the platform to make sure. Well, he had left the train at the last station; it was a question of seconds. I was in the street above in less time than it takes to tell it, and swung myself recklessly aboard a passing south-bound surface car; but a stream of trucks and automobiles blocked the track; and before we passed the next corner I jumped off and ran. Three blocks I went at the top of my speed,my breath growing shorter at every stride. And then, nearly a block away to the westward, I caught sight of the silk hat against the reddening sky.
It was an easy matter enough to overtake the man. He walked along slowly and rather heavily, glancing upward at the numbers of the houses; and presently he paused to verify an address in a pocketbook. I might have spoken to him then, but I hesitated for a pretext. His name was what I wanted first; and in my ignorance of the circumstances it would be safer to settle one thing at a time. While I debated with myself, he went up the steps of a house near West End Avenue. Since it was evidently not his home, nothing could be lost by a little patient consideration; so lighting a cigarette, of which by now I felt considerable need, I strolled to and fro before the house, while I pondered my next move. Five or ten minutes went by, and I was on the point of ringing the bell and asking who it was that had just come in, when the electric brougham purred around the corner, with my friend Thomas sitting stolidly at the wheel. At the moment, I happened to be nearly at the other end of the block, and before I reached the spot where the brougham had drawn up my man had come out of the house.I could hardly question his servant before his face. And the next minute he had clambered in and driven decorously away.
I ran as far as the corner, looking about in all directions for a taxicab. None was in sight; and to follow afoot for any distance was, of course, impossible. I should have to be content with the number of the brougham and such information as inquiries at the two houses I knew the man to have visited might yield. Then a boy came by on a decrepit bicycle, and I caught at his handles.
"Let me take your wheel," I panted. He twisted his face into position for a howl. "Nonsense, kid, I'm not going to steal it. Look at me. Here," I thrust a bill into his hand. "That's more than your machine's worth, and I'll send it back to you in an hour. Where do you live?"
He told me in a dazed sort of tone, and I was wavering on my way almost before he had finished. The wheel ran abominably hard, and was so much too low for me that my knees barely cleared the handle-bars; still, it meant all the difference between losing the brougham altogether and being able to follow it easily. All the way down to the fifties it led me, and eastward beyond Madison Avenue,halting at last before a rigid-looking domicile whose lower window displayed a strip of ground glass with the legend: "Immanuel Paulus, M. D."
Somehow, the name was indefinitely familiar, as the face had been. I wasted no time in surmise, but went straight up to the door.
"Was that Doctor Paulus who just came in?" I asked the maid. She looked me over cautiously.
"Who was it wanted to see him, sir?"
"He wouldn't know me," I said, "it's only that I have something which I think he lost in the street."
The trick worked, as I had expected, and a moment later my man stood before me identified, even to the shrill precision of his voice with its tinge of German accent.
"I found this in front of your door, Doctor," said I, "and I thought you had dropped it as you went in." And I handed him my silver pocket-knife. Deliberately he produced his own, and with deliberate courtesy pointed out my mistake. I thought as the door closed behind me that there had been a glint of recognition in his eyes. But the final step remained to take; and with an aching swarm of suspicions writhing in my brain, I sought out a public telephone.
"Mac," I asked, "who and what is Doctor Immanuel Paulus?" and the answer I had expected set the keystone upon a whole arch of tottering reminiscences.
"Biggest alienist and nerve-shark in town; biggest in the country, I guess. He was the old guy sittin' alone in the corner at that spook-hunt. D'you remember?"
I did not sleep very much that night; but it was no longer the frustrate misery of indecision. I was done with all that, with beating myself aimlessly against blind bars and running weary circles in the wheel, with tossing helplessly in a mesh of irresoluble circumstances. I saw now what I had to do; and the problem was not what the trouble might be, not even what I must accomplish, but only how I should accomplish it. The Carucci story might be true wholly, or in part, or practically not at all; it did not matter. Assuming all of it, if Lady was Miriam, and Reid had married her when he was not free to do so, she was not his wife even in law. Whether his wife was now living or dead made no difference. Lady was not bound to him in theory and certainly not in reality. She was free to come to me if she chose, and I had only to make her see it.
But I did not for a moment believe that thetrouble was so directly her concern. Mrs. Tabor was insane, or was feared to be: that was beyond a doubt, and that beyond a doubt was the root and center of it all; that was what the family had so elaborately striven to conceal, either because of the nature of her illusion, or because of some scandal in the events which had brought it about. That was reason enough, granting their determination to keep it secret, for all that I had seen, from the midnight alarm, which had driven me out of the house, to Mrs. Tabor's terror of the alienist; and her absurd suggestion that he himself was insane clenched the matter. What supported it still more was that if this were so, then all these honest people had from point to point spoken the truth; Mr. Tabor had, as he said, trusted me to the edge of caution; Lady had told the truth in fear, and Reid under pressure; Sheila had told the truth, only inflated and colored by superstition. And as I thought over the substance of what she had told me, I wondered whether by some chance her tale had not been truer than I thought, nearer than even the others knew to the heart of reality. I would not take her ghosts too literally; but Mrs. Tabor might have some illusion of her dead daughter's presence, and I rememberedthe voice called Miriam that had spoken in the circle of spirit-seekers. Was there not surely some connection here?
Yet, however that might be, it all closed round a single need. I cared nothing, after all, what the shadow might be, except as that concerned my taking Lady away from it. It would be like her loyalty to feel the family trouble a bond that she must not selfishly break, and like her girlhood to dream her mother's delusion a taint that must forbid her marrying. But she was wrong in both, and to-morrow I should tell her so and take her away with me. Even if she were right, I should do the same: I had grown to care for the others, and I was not wholly careless of humanity; but in the face of this greater matter, family and race and right itself, if need were, might go to the devil. I was fighting for her and for myself, and for that wherein we two were one desire.
I fell asleep at last thinking of that, and imagining what I should need to say and do; and the next morning I went out to Stamford in a curious mood of deliberation; feeling, on the threshold of crisis, unnaturally calm and sure; as if I were somehow going with the stream, a small embodiment of predeterminedforce, a mouthpiece of the thing which was to be.
As she had done once before, Sheila opened the door for me. It was very plain that she was glad of my coming.
"Sure it's Mr. Crosby!" she exclaimed softly. "What's the matter, sir? You look white and tired like. 'Tis all the world seems upset lately."
"I want to see Miss Tabor, Sheila. Will you tell her that I am here?"
"That's the very thing I'm not to tell her, sir. She said most particular that she was not to see any one to-day; but—" Sheila frowned at me forbiddingly, "you sit down an' wait a minute, sir, an' I'll do me best. I'm a servant-girl no longer—ordhers is nothing to me."
"But, Sheila—" I began nervously.
"But nothin', Mr. Crosby. You sit down an' wait," and she was gone before I could say another word. I sat in the great room, as if at the portals of judgment day, every fiber of me keenly alive, and yet my mind knowing no particular focus of thought. The future gaped before me like eternity, something too vaguely large for definition or comprehension. I remember that I kept whisperingdryly to myself that man was master of his fate, and feeling infinitesimally comforted by the sophistry.
The curtains at the door parted, and Lady stood looking into my eyes. I saw before she spoke that she knew why I had come.
"I was sure that it was you," she said at last. "Sheila told me that a young man was down-stairs, and that she could not get him to go away."
"She told me," I said, "that you did not wish to see me. Was that true?"
Lady sank wearily into a chair. "Sheila should not have let you in," she said. "I was afraid that you might come here; and you know that it was wrong of you to come. You know that as well as I do."
She spoke monotonously, with pauses between the words, leaning back along the deep chair. The last few days must have been hard ones for her. She was very pale, the little blue veins in her temples distinct and clearly lined. It tore me to see her so; and for a moment I wondered if I had done well to come, and felt a wave of that uncomfortable reaction which meets one on the threshold of a test; for a moment only, then I knew that even though Itired her the more, it was a price that we must pay for her sake as well as mine. No good ever comes of half understandings.
"No, I don't know that," I said slowly. "You don't believe that I'm altogether selfish, or that I would come now, when I know that many things have distressed you, to give you any further reason for distress."
She leaned forward, one white hand raised. "Please," she said, "I am not sure—not really sure—why you have come. But I am certain of this, that you have made a mistake in coming. There's nothing on earth that you can do to help us just now—there's nothing anybody can do—there's nothing anybody can do."
"Oh, things aren't so bad as that." I knew that I was only temporizing, and raged inwardly at myself.
Lady's eyes dropped, and one hand played nervously with a loop of the chain that hung about her neck.
"I don't believe you can understand just how bad they are. The worst of it is that I can't tell you—oh, it wasn't fair of you to come to-day"—her voice broke ever so little, and her eyes brimmed with unshedtears—"I'm tired and disheartened, and I want advice and comfort—no, don't come near me—I can't tell you anything—there's nothing I can tell to anybody in the world."
I was standing before her. "No, I can't comfort you now," I said. "I'm here to ask you things, and perhaps to hurt you very much. But you mustn't think I've come carelessly. I came because I had to—because there are things I have to understand to go on living."
Her eyes were frightened, but she settled herself back as if to meet whatever blow my questioning might give. "I don't think that you are very generous to-day," she said; and her voice grew harder than I had ever heard it. "Neither shall I answer anything that I may not. But—but perhaps you are right—perhaps there are some things that you should know. Please say what you have to say and have it done."
"You told me once," I began gently, "that your name was Margaret. Was that true?"
"True?" she wrinkled her brow. "Of course it was true." It was evidently not a question that she had expected.
"Then who is Miriam?"
"Oh, I told you the truth then. Do you doubt it? Why should you ask these things again?"
I paused. Certainly she was not to hear that ugly story if it were not true and I could in any way prevent it.
"It may seem very strange to you," said I, "but some day I will tell you all about it. I have to know this now: Do you mean that it is true you have a sister, that her name is Miriam, and that she is—that she was Doctor Reid's wife?" The question was out at last, and my heart stopped for the answer.
"Why, yes," she answered, in the same disinterested tone, as if she were telling dry facts in distant history—"Miriam married Walter when he came back from studying abroad. She only lived about a year. They had a little girl, you know, that lived not more than about an hour. I think if she had lived, Miriam would have lived too. But it was too much for her to bear. She died three days after her baby died."
The unshed tears were falling now, falling quietly in the mere physical relief of tender sorrow. Every rigid line of tragedy and pain had disappeared, and her trouble came upon her naturally,like sleep, a relaxation and a rest after hot-eyed days. I did not even feel any sorrow for her, so full was I of the new certainty that we were free. Very reverently I came closer to her, and like a child she turned to me and hid her face against my shoulder. So we rested for a space. I do not think that either of us had any definite thought—only that peace wrapped us like a garment and that the tension of the past few weeks had somehow vanished away. At last Lady drew herself quietly from me, half smiling as she brushed away her tears.
"I have been very silly," she whispered, "but it's all over now. It was good of you to let me cry," and she reached her hand toward me with a gesture so intimately grateful that my love fairly broke its bounds, and I caught it almost fiercely in my own.
"Lady, Lady dearest," I cried, "can't you see what it all means? Oh, my dear, you must see. I love you. That is all I know in the world, and nothing else matters or can matter."
"No, no—you must not—" she drew back from me frightened. "You must not tell me that. You have no right—and you are spoiling it all."
"Don't you love me?" I persisted.
Lady raised her eyes sadly. "There can be no such thing for you and me. I have told you why."
"What have you told me?"
"I've told you that even if I did—care for you—that I could not let myself care—that I can only see you even, when you treat me as a friend, and only as a friend."
"You told me once, I remember, that there was some one else. I think now that you were mistaken. There neither is nor can be any one else."
"But there is." The words were scarcely audible, and her eyes were turned away from me.
"I know perhaps what you mean. I didn't know at the time—but I think I do now. Do you mean that the some one else, the person who stands between you and me, is your mother?"
Lady looked past me blankly. "My mother?" she questioned.
"You must see that I have to know the real truth now," I said. "You can surely trust me; and I am trying for something that means more than life. Lady, you must answer me fairly. Is it not because of your mother that you say these things?"
"What do you know of my mother?"
"I know," I answered as gently as I could, "thatyou all believe she is temporarily unbalanced; that Doctor Immanuel Paulus has declared her insane."
Lady had gone very white again.
"Yes, that is the reason," she said.
"But," I cried, "that is no reason at all! If you feared that my intimacy would betray this trouble you all guard as a secret—why, you see I know that now; and surely you can not doubt in your heart that I would guard any secret of yours more sacredly than anything in the world. Why has it anything to do with us?" I was speaking eagerly, with that foolish burst of argumentative logic which a lover fondly imagines potent, hurling breathless words against the impregnability of conviction.
"No," said Lady softly. "You are wrong, because you still do not know. There is no taint of insanity in the family; we are not afraid of that. Mother was taken out of herself by a great shock, not by inheritance."
"Yes," I said, "by the shock of your sister's death. I know that."
"Then you know almost everything," said Lady, "except perhaps—except the reason that mother gives for my sister's death—her marriage."
We were both of us for a long time silent.
"You see, it is no question of the truth." She went on at last, in that terribly distant and even voice. "It is true to her—and very dreadful—so that it is dangerous for her even to remember. That is why she shrinks from Walter; that is why I keep her wedding-ring." She touched the chain that hung about her neck. "And that is why—do you understand now?"
I nodded wordlessly, for the world seemed coming to an end. Then, thank God, I looked into the eyes of my love; and behind their despair I read appeal, the ageless call of a woman's heart to the one man of her faith. And then I had taken her in my arms. I held her close and the fragrance of her hair was in my nostrils, and soft arms had crept around my neck, bending my head to meet the upturned face.
"Oh, Laurie, you will be kind to me," she said at last. "I can never do it all alone. You must help—oh, my dear, I have needed you so."
"It will be right. You know that it is right," I whispered.
"You must find the way, then, dear— I have thought so long that it was wrong to tell you that even now I can't tell what is right. Only—Goddoesn't let some things be unless He means them—but I can't see the way. You must find it now, for her and us too."
What feeling I had of another presence I do not know; but half uneasily I turned. Between the curtains of the doorway stood Mrs. Tabor, her hands raised above her head gripped the curtains as if for support, so that she seemed rather to hang there than to stand; her eyes looked through and beyond us vacantly, and the pretty old-young face was twisted like a tragic mask. Then the curtains dropped before her, and from the hall came the gasp of a stifling sob. Lady was out of my arms and away as if I had not been there. Her cool voice pleaded for a moment with the rising hysteria without. Then all sound died, and I was left utterly alone; the silence of the great room about me, and before my mind the world of reality and the battle still to fight.
After a few empty minutes, I went quietly out of the house, and at the end of the drive paused to look back over the sunlit lawn with its bright flower-beds and heavy trees. My work was plain enough before me now; I saw what I had to do, and the only question was my method of approach. The impossibility of it somehow did not interest me. I did not want to think the situation over, but merely to decide at what point I should first take hold upon it; and I was eager to begin. As I stood there, I saw Doctor Reid, in loose flannels and with a tennis racket in his hand, come in the side gate and walk jerkily toward the garage in the rear. Here was one thing to be done at least, and I might as well attend to it while I was on the ground.
His springy step was on the stairs as I entered the building after him, and I overtook him at the top, shuffling from one foot to the other before an oakendoor, while he hunted through his pockets for the key. He turned sharply at the sound of my coming.
"What are you doing here?" was his greeting.
"Reid," said I, "I have to say to you that I regret forcing that matter on you the other night; and if you'll give me a little time, I want to tell you why. It will end in our pulling more or less together, instead of fighting each other."
His face set for an instant, then he made up his mind. "Very well. I'm free for a while. Come in. No occasion perhaps for an apology: spoke too hastily myself. No sense in being emotional." He threw open the door and stepped back. "My digestion wasn't normal that day, you see. Fermentation. Generally a physical basis for those things. Alcohol besides."
I preceded him into a sudden blaze of air and sunlight, a first impression of wide space and staring cleanliness. While I blinked, Reid swung a leather covered chair toward me, with a word of hasty excuse.
"Just been exercising, you see, and I've got to take my shower. Great mistake sitting down without. I'll be with you in half a moment," and he vanished behind a rubber curtain that ran on a nickeled rodbefore an alcove at the back, leaving me to look about the room. It was very large, occupying the whole breadth of the building, and fitted up with an astonishing combination of convenience and hygiene. Dull red tiles covered the floor and rose like a wainscot half way up the walls. Above that ran a belt of white, glazed paper enameled to represent tiling; and the ceiling was of corrugated metal, also enameled white. Two large windows in front, and one on either side, wide open behind wire screens, and uncurtained, let in a flood of light and air which somehow in entering seemed to exchange its outdoor freshness for the sterilized, careful purity of a laboratory. Between the front windows a large glass-topped table bore a microscope and microtome covered by glass bells, a Bunsen burner, and a most orderly collection of bottles and test-tubes. On one side of this was a porcelain sink, and on the other a heavy oak desk with a telephone and every utensil in place. Steel sectional bookcases along the walls displayed rows of technical books and gleaming instruments. In one corner stood an iron bed, with a strip of green grass matting before it, and in the other a pair of Indian clubs and a set of chest-weights flanked an anthropometric scale. The onlydecorations were a large print of Rembrandt'sAnatomy, two or three surprisingly good nudes, and a few glaring French medical caricatures. And everything possible about the room was covered with glass—tables, desk, bookcases, the shelves above the sink, and the very window-sills. If ever a room did so, this one declared the character of its inhabitant; and looking upon its comfortless convenience, I caught myself wondering how any normal woman could endure marriage with such an antiseptic personality. Then as Reid issued from his bath, glowing and alert with vivid energy and contagiously alive, the idea seemed not inconceivable after all.
"Pretty comfortable place, eh?" he burst forth. "Fine. Fine. All my own idea. Fitted it up according to my own notion. Everything I need right here, nothing useless, plenty of light and ventilation. Have a cigarette? I don't smoke often myself, but I keep 'em at hand. Best form to take tobacco, if you don't inhale. Popular idea all rot."
I lit one and settled back. "I've just asked Lady to marry me," I said, as quietly as I could. "She says that the only reason she won't is her mother. And I understand why."
His face lighted for a moment. "I told Taboryou'd be at the bottom of it eventually. As for the other matter—well, it has to be reckoned with. Strongest motive we have. The race has got to go on." He frowned suddenly: "How much do you know?"
"I know that Carucci lied; I know that Mrs. Tabor is out of her mind; I know that her delusion takes the form of a horror of marriage, because—" I stopped, searching for a softened form of words; but Reid took up the broken sentence and went evenly on, as impersonally scientific as if we had been speaking of strangers.
"Because of my wife's death. Hysteria aggravated by introspection. Fixed idea of Miriam's continual presence—what's that line?—'the wish father to the thought'— The psychic element in these things, you know, does react on the physical. Whole thing moves in a circle. Then paranoia."
"She's got to get well," I said. "What's the best chance? What can we do?"
"We're doing all we can. We've called the best man in the country. You can't depend on any prognosis, you know. We don't understand these things perfectly, at best. There's no rigid line of demarcation between insanity and hysteria. Nervous andmental diseases run into each other. You can't tell."
"Just what does Doctor Paulus say?"
"Paranoia. Says if there were continual external suggestions of Miriam he'd call it only hysterical; but we guard her as far as possible from anything of the kind. If she originates the hallucinations herself, it's mental. Nothing to do but keep her quiet, avoid all reminders, avoid excitement, lead her mind in other directions, suggest normality. Nothing more possible, unless we take her abroad for hypnotic treatment, and that doesn't seem advisable. Nothing else to be done. Question of time."
"Then it's just a question of getting rid of this fixed idea?"
"Well, but that's begging the whole question, Crosby, don't you see? The fixed idea is the disease. You're a layman, you know, and you look at it with the simplicity of ignorance. No offense meant, but that's the plain fact, you know. Paulus doesn't call it hopeless, but Rome wasn't built in a day. Nothing to do but wait."
"I'm going to find something to do," I said, "because something has got to be done."
"Right spirit. Right way to face a difficulty. Alwaysbest to be optimistic. But of course, you mustn't risk any private experiments. You understand that. Might do harm. Hell's paved with good intentions, you know, and we've got an expert on the case. Where there's any work for you, we'll count you in, but you mustn't butt in."
I rose from my chair. "Of course I've no idea of putting in my oar without authority. Give me credit for that much sense—and thank you for making me understand the facts. Tell Mr. Tabor of this conversation, will you? I'm off to New York."
"Certainly. Certainly. By the way, Crosby, I suppose I ought to congratulate you. Fine. Fine. Well, we've all got to be patient and hope for the best. It's hard, of course. But life's a hard struggle. A hard struggle. Good-by. Can you see your way down?"
As Reid had intelligently observed, it was hard. And the hardest part of it was the waiting. I saw Maclean that same night, and without evincing more than an ordinary curiosity about spiritualism, arranged to be taken to the next of the séances. After that, there was nothing to do until one should be held. The slender thread of coincidence between Sheila's ghost-stories and my experiences at the lastone was my single chance of discovering a remedy of which the doctors did not know. Probably I should discover nothing of any use; but until I could contribute some definite help, I would not go back to Stamford. I had made more than enough trouble there already.
It was another week before the chance came. And I was a little surprised when Maclean conducted me not to the closed house we had before visited, but to the house on Ninety-second Street to which I had followed Doctor Paulus on his way home.
"Oh, they meet around at one another's houses," Mac explained as we went up the steps. "It's a gang of social lights that's runnin' these stunts as a fad, you see? An' the psychic researchers, they ring in. Now this time, see if you can't keep something on your stomach besides your hand. You missed a pile of fun last performance."
It was a very different sort of house from the other; wide open and full of the sense of family inhabitance, a house full of silk hangings and new mahogany and vases of unseasonable flowers, an orchid of a house, a house where people would be like their own automobile, polished and expensive and a trifle fast. Professor Shelburgh was there,looking a little out of his element; and the others, by what I could tell, were mostly the same people as before; but there were more of them, twenty or twenty-five all told, chattering in groups about the brilliant room and giving it almost the air of a reception. It was evening, and the electric light and the formal dress of most of the guests added to the impression. I had my first good look at the medium before the proceedings began; a fattish, fluffy woman with large eyes, pale-haired and slow-moving, whose voluble trivialities of conversation and dress exaggerated both vulgarism and convention. For a moment or two, I wrestled with an uncanny certainty of having seen her somewhere before, groping about among recollections. Then all at once I remembered; she was the woman who had been with us in the trolley accident, the woman who had so curiously discovered the whereabouts of the chain.
As before, the circle formed about the center-table consisted of only a dozen or so, and the rest of us were left sitting about the walls. The doors were closed, and the extinguishing of the lights left the room in almost utter darkness. The greenish pallor about the edges of the windows made it possible toimagine rather than to see. The gloom had the solidity of closed eyelids; and perhaps because of the sudden transition from brilliant light, it had the same fullness of indefinite color and movement; as when one suddenly buries one's face in the pillow, with the light still burning. I caught myself unconsciously straining my eyes to observe these half-imaginary after-images. And despite the difference of environment, the sitters had hardly begun their tuneless crooning of old songs before I felt the same breathless closeness as before, the same saturated oppression, the same feeling of uncomfortable and even indecent overcrowding.
I steadied myself with long breaths, bracing involuntarily against the tension. Then all at once, the door opened silently and softly closed; and as I turned to look some one rustled past me, visible only as a solid shadow in the gloom, and without a word slipped into a seat at the table. The others made room, and a chair was moved up quietly, no one speaking or even pausing in the song. But my heart pounded in my ears and my hands heated as I clenched them, for somehow I knew as certainly as if I could have plainly seen that the new-comer was Mrs. Tabor.
And it was as if she brought with her an increase of the already tense expectancy, as if her own nervous trouble spread out about her like a deepening of color, like a drop of blood falling into water already tinged with red. It was my own imagination, of course, the excitement of being close upon my quest, and the reaction of silence closing over the interruption of her entrance; but I felt the exertion of breathing, as if I were immersed up to the chin in water. If the atmosphere had been like a weight before, it was now like a deliberately closing vise. In the intervals of the droning hum at the table, the silence took on a quality of brittleness. Little brushings and rustlings ran in waves around the room, and I thought how a breeze runs over a field of tall grass, where each tuft in turn takes up its neighbor's restlessness. It occurred to me suddenly that most of the people here were women; and the sense of crowded presence led me to imagining crowds and throngs of women grouped in pictures or dancing in rows upon the stage. And then I remembered sharply that I could not see Mrs. Tabor and wondered whether my certainty that it was she had any more foundation than these other fantasies. I heard my own breathing, and that of many others.I felt vaguely irritated that all these breathings were not keeping time, and instinctively brought my own into the rhythm of the predominating number.