"Do ye think I look like a dead woman?""Do ye think I look like a dead woman?"
Sheila broke into a peal of laughter. "'Tis fine countrymen ye have, Antonio, an' fine bloodhounds they make, to be sure! Ye poor, ignorant little men, open your mouths an' shut your eyes. 'Tis a miracle I'll be showin' ye. Look here—Sheila Macnamara, for her sins called Carucci, stands before ye—an'ye say I'm murdered! Ye little black, beady-eyed divils, 'tis the likes av ye that goes makin' trouble for my man. Take off your dhirty little fat paws; I'll have none av it. Take thim off, ye thief, ye zany loon! Do ye think I look like a dead woman?"
The fat Italian dangled his handcuffs as if they had been eye-glasses.
"It is true," he said, "she is like the description; but then, how did she come here?"
"Whisper!" said Sheila, "I do not love me husband," Antonio glared. "So while he was asleep I eloped with this other handsome young gentleman here."
The two little men grew very red.
"Look here," I said, "you can see there has been a mistake. Mrs. Carucci is as well as ever, and she isn't going to make any charge against her husband. The only thing you've got on me is breaking the speed law. Five dollars apiece would about cover my fine, wouldn't it?"
Two gravely beautiful Italian smiles answered me. We watched them well out of sight; then Sheila turned to her crestfallen lord and master.
"Out with it, ye dhrunken beast," she said, "where is she?"
So that was why Sheila had come here.
"Who?" Carucci asked blankly.
"Who? You look innocent, don't ye, standin' there askin' me who! What have ye done with her, you an' your silly revenges? I'll teach ye to keep out av things that're none av your business, ye leather-headed, garlic-eatin' baboon, ye!" She grasped him solidly by both ears, and shook him till his greasy hair flapped.
All the fight seemed to have gone out of Carucci, and he squirmed away, appealing and protesting in a torrent of Italian too fast and mutilated for my ear. Sheila answered incongruously in the same language.
"He says he don't know anything about it," she told me finally, "and for once I believe him, sir. He can lie well enough to some folks, but he can't lie to me."
"Well," said I, "if you believe him, you ought to know. But I wish you'd get him away from here, Sheila. He's been sending black hand letters to Mr. Tabor."
"He has, has he, the sphalpeen!" and again came the dual and ludicrous torrent of Neapolitan.
"'Twas just the lovin' heart of him, sir. He'sthat impetuous. But I'll learn him manners. You go on back to the house, an' you'll hear no more from Antonio. It's a beast he is sometimes when he is drunk, but he's sober enough now, sir, and when sober he has the sense to be afraid of me. Have no fear, I'll send him packin'. Leave him to me."
I laughed. "All right, Sheila," I said. "If you use the same persuasion with him that you've been using, I think you can teach him almost anything."
I reached the Tabors' out of breath, and stumbled panting up the steps; and at the door I stood a moment to gather my breath and thoughts, wondering if Lady and Mr. Tabor had returned. Mr. Tabor's hat was still missing from the rack; and I lit a cigarette as I strolled into the living-room to wait. Mrs. Tabor was sitting over a piece of embroidery by the window.
"You look hot," she said, glancing up, "what is the matter? Have you been running?"
"I've been looking for you," I stammered. "Sheila thought you were lost or something." The words were out before I could stop them.
"Lost?" Mrs. Tabor repeated, raising her brows, "lost? What should make you think I was lost?"
"Why, Sheila said you hadn't told her you were going, and she couldn't find you anywhere, and—"
"You are all the strangest people," said Mrs. Tabor. "I have been out of town at an afternoon tea with friends at Greenwich. It was the shortest little trip imaginable. Has Lady got back yet?"
I sat down rather uncomfortably. We had all of us been made to look foolish, and I was here to bear the brunt of it alone. What had become of Reid, I did not know; but I was much mistaken in him if he had not gone off upon some highly efficient search of his own, after alarming Lady and her father. So the whole family had been upset because a rather thoughtless little woman had gone out without thinking to give notice of her intended absence, and because an officious young son-in-law had jumped at the chance to exploit his executive ability. If Sheila and I had been disturbed, we had at least only acted under his direction; and the whole foolish flurry, with its risk of attracting public attention, had emanated from the jerky mind of Reid.
"I must plead guilty," I said, "of giving the first alarm. Sheila seemed worried, and I called up Doctor Reid on the telephone."
Mrs. Tabor's face clouded, and it seemed to me that something like anger gathered in her eyes. "It was very like him," she said, "he is the most selfish man in the world." She paused. "If you don't mind, Mr. Crosby, we will not talk about him. I am tired."
I got to my feet, feeling as if I had heard something to which I had no right.
"Mrs. Tabor," said I, "you must forgive me for having troubled you with the matter at all. I am stupid sometimes, and forgot that we had been officious and that you might be tired."
She flashed forth an appealing little hand. "No, you are not to go; I didn't mean that. I'm not so truly tired that I want to be alone. In fact, I shall rest much better if you stay and keep me company."
"I shall be very glad to," I answered. "I've regretted all along that I haven't been able to see you more often. Besides, I'm the only man in the house for the moment, and I suppose I oughtn't to leave my post until the others come home."
She raised her brows. "Why, what do you mean? That sounds as if we were in a state of siege. You're a guest, Mr. Crosby, not a sentry on duty."
I had said too much, evidently, and I felt angrilythat if Mrs. Tabor knew nothing of affairs I should have been warned of the fact. "I didn't mean that," I said, as easily as I could manage. "Only that the others are still looking for you, and I ought to let them know as soon as may be that I've been more fortunate. I'd telephone if I knew where they were."
"But it's all so ridiculous. I'm not a child, you know." Her petulance was rising again. "Because a tramp came into the house the other day is no reason for hedging me about as if we were all back in the dark ages. It's never likely to happen again; and besides, there was no danger at the time of anything worse than losing some of the silver. I can't see the least excuse for all this mysterious caution. And it's been going on so for months—long before there was even that shadow of a reason."
I tried to play up to the situation. "It's just the exaggeration of their care for you, I suppose. You haven't been quite well, and they worry needlessly because it matters so much. Didn't you used to feel the same way about Lady when she was little and getting over the measles?"
The next instant I realized that I should hardly have used the nickname; but Mrs. Tabor did notseem to have noticed my slip. She was looking fixedly out through the parted curtains as though there were some one in the hall, and I instinctively glanced in the same direction. When I looked back again, she was still distrait, and I went on; "And anyway, it's splendid to see you so well at last."
She smiled. "I haven't really been much laid up at all. I've only been a little overtired. People worry about me too much, Mr. Crosby. I have a poor heart, but I'm always pretty careful of myself; yet neither Mr. Tabor nor Lady can seem to let me out of their sight. I don't like it."
She brushed the hair from her forehead with a weary little gesture of impatience. She looked very much as a pretty spoiled child might have. Yet I felt rather disloyal to the rest of them in listening. Of course, Mrs. Tabor meant nothing; she was merely tired and fretful; but still, I did not like being made the confident of these family petulances. Lady, I knew, loved her mother devotedly, and so did Mr. Tabor—at least, he had given every evidence of affection.
"How would you like it, Mr. Crosby," she added, "if you could never go out for even a walk all alone? And Mr. Tabor has been acting so strangely all thiswhile—as if he and Lady shared some secret that they were anxious to keep from me of all people."
I was by now frankly embarrassed, and I must have shown it. "I don't quite see why—" I began.
"Are you in the secret too?" she asked suddenly.
My hair prickled. "No, of course not," I stammered. "And I don't really think that there can be any secret, Mrs. Tabor, or anything they would keep from you." Yet I began to wonder whether she were acting cleverly in ignorance of how much I really did know, or were actually guarded from all knowledge of the admitted mystery. While I scrambled after a safe word, I heard the crunch of wheels upon the gravel.
"There they are now," I said.
Lady and her father came hurrying into the room with all the air of having come home merely to touch base, as the children say; as if they but wished to inform themselves of developments before starting out upon another quest. Lady saw her mother first.
"Why, mother dear!" she cried. "We—" she stopped.
Mr. Tabor coughed. "Where is Walter?" he asked.
"Indeed, I don't know," Mrs. Tabor answered rather sharply. "What on earth do you want of him?"
Mr. Tabor smiled slowly and expansively. "I don't want him at all, my dear; but I do very much want my dinner. Do you think it is nearly ready? Lady, suppose you poke things up in the kitchen a little, if you can. I am nearly famished."
"Well," said I, "I had nearly forgotten about supper, and I believe we are to have waffles at the inn to-night," and I got to my feet.
"Mr. Crosby, waffles or no waffles, you are not to go," said Mrs. Tabor. "Here we are just started upon a nice little visit, and these ravenous people of mine come bursting in from goodness knows where or what, and begin clamoring for food. Since we must eat, you are to eat with us."
I said something conventional, with an apologetic glance at Mr. Tabor. He was frowning at the ceiling as if he had not heard.
It was hardly a comfortable meal. I felt that I should not be there, and that the others, though for no personal fault of mine, were wishing me out of the way; while Mrs. Tabor confined her conversation almost entirely to me in a way that made meobviously a bulwark against them. She was bright and chatty enough, but I could plainly feel the uneasiness under it; and as the meal progressed she became more uneasy still, now and then turning suddenly in her chair or laying down her fork with little abrupt decisions that came to nothing, as if she were hesitating on the brink of a plunge. Twice she stretched out a hand for silence, listening over her shoulder a moment, and then hurrying back into the meaningless and disrupted conversation.
As we were eating dessert, Doctor Reid came in for a moment. That is, he came as far as the door, and I thought Mr. Tabor made some sort of gesture to him below the table-top. At any rate, he turned on his heel and left, after a nervous word or two. I looked around to see Mrs. Tabor's face set and stern, every little prettiness of expression fled. I must have stared, for she smiled after a moment, and nodded at me mysteriously as if I alone shared the secret of the dislike she had voiced in the afternoon.
"Come, mother dear," Lady said softly. "Here are the rest of us nearly through, and you've hardly touched your ice."
Mrs. Tabor looked up, vaguely apologetic. "Why,Miriam, I'm sure I beg your pardon," she said. And very meekly she took up her spoon.
Of course it was the most natural slip in the world, and meant absolutely nothing; but I could not put out of my mind the feeling that some unrecognized bomb had been exploded in our midst. I could not be merely imagining Lady's deepening color, nor the nervous hurry with which she forced the conversation; Mr. Tabor and I helping as best we might, and at best ungracefully. I could not shake off that sense of a common consciousness whose existence none of us admitted, of something vividly present in all our minds but not to be noticed in words, which makes it so difficult for a whole company to keep their countenance in the face of an untactful situation; the strain which people feel when one unconscious bore afflicts the rest, when a stranger rushes in upon the heels of an unfinished intimacy, or when somebody makes an unmentionable slip of the tongue. I knew that Lady and her father were embarrassed by the same trifle which embarrassed me; and through the laborious unconsciousness of the next few minutes, the name of Miriam rang in all our ears until the very air seemed as it were to grow heavy with the weight of her invisiblepresence. The tension grew minute by minute as we talked, until I felt as if I could hardly keep on. And Mrs. Tabor, looking up in a comfortless pause and finding us all at gaze, broke down entirely. Her eyes filled, and she pushed back her chair.
"George, dear," she asked piteously, "what is the matter? What has come to you all?" Then as Mr. Tabor hesitated for an answer, she turned with a despairing little gesture to her daughter. "You tell me what it is, Miriam," she cried.
Mr. Tabor rose from the table. "With your permission, my dear, Crosby and I will go out and smoke," he said. "There isn't anything the matter. You only imagine it, and you need Lady to tell you so."
Mrs. Tabor turned to me quickly. "You can smoke here just as well," she said hurriedly, "I like it. And besides, you are the only one who seems to have anything to say this evening. These other dear stupid people are both acting as if we were sitting at baked meats instead of a pleasant ice. I can't imagine what has got into them, unless they have some dark secret of their own." She was cheering visibly as she spoke, but with the last words her face clouded again. I did my best to keep thetalk moving after that, though Heaven knows what I found to say. And at last the meal was over.
As soon as we left the table, Mr. Tabor suggested that his wife was very tired, and that she should be off to bed. She agreed reluctantly enough only when Lady joined her father in his importunity and said that she would go up with her. At last she rose and bade us all good night; but when she and Lady were at the very door, she turned and looked back at us. Then, of a sudden she ran lightly across the room and stooped to my ear. "I have a little secret of my own," she laughed across at her husband. Then very swiftly, and with a catch in her voice, she whispered, "They are trying to take Miriam away from me!"
I glanced instinctively across at Mr. Tabor, to see if he had overheard; but he gave no sign of having done so. He stood with one broad hand slowly tightening and relaxing over the back of his chair, his eyes following unwaveringly the slight figure as it paused beyond the curtains and Lady let them fall into place, then he sat wearily down again, with a smile that did not smooth the white bristle of his brows.
"That shows how tired Mrs. Tabor is," he said casually. "I never knew her to confuse the names in that way before."
My first shock changed unreasonably into the feeling of a suspected conspirator. I was sure that he had not heard; his reference was only to his wife's calling Lady "Miriam," not to her whispered words; but what could those words mean? Where wasMiriam? And if this house were in some way divided against itself, on what side was I? Then I became suddenly conscious of my silence.
"Surely there is nothing at all strange in that," I answered. "For a mother to call her children by one another's names is the commonest thing in the world; especially when—" I stopped, wondering whether I were quite sure that Miriam was dead.
"Yes, natural enough, of course." He spoke absently; then went on as if answering my thought; "And then, Mrs. Tabor was greatly shaken by our first daughter's death: so much so that she has never quite recovered herself physically. Sometimes, even now, she hardly realizes, I think, that Miriam is not here." He looked down at his hand, then raised his eyes steadily to mine.
"That was several years ago?" I said, to say something.
"Two years. We have to keep Walter Reid out of her sight, although she is very fond of him, because his actual words and ways make her remember." Perhaps it was the effort to convince himself which made him seem needlessly eager to explain.
"She must be growing stronger though, all the while," I suggested. "And from now on, we shallhave peace from Carucci and all the other disturbances he brings in his train."
He did not answer, and the discomfort of silence settled heavily down. I began to hear the clock ticking, and to be half conscious of my own breathing. Some one crossed the room above us and went quietly down the upper hall toward the rear of the house. Had that been Miriam's room in which I found the intruder; and if so, why was it kept uncannily the same when all the family were striving to guard the mother from remembrance? Presently Mr. Tabor roused himself with the decision of a man putting a thought away.
"I meant to ask you about that," he said. "Somehow or other, this black hand business must stop. I can't have reporters and detectives and blackmailing Italians lurking about to cause gossip and disturb Mrs. Tabor, and I won't have it. We've done no more than merely to hold off the spies, and that necessity in itself was bad enough. But when it comes to having Carucci break into the house and alarm the family—" He looked sharply at me. "Have you heard anything further from your friend?"
"Nothing more than you know; but I ran acrossCarucci this afternoon, and I think that incident is closed." I went over the afternoon's events, adding: "So there's no murder mystery now, no newspaper story, and unless Sheila is very much mistaken in herself, we've heard the last of Carucci. That clears the atmosphere pretty thoroughly, doesn't it?"
He did not seem to be much relieved. "Yes if Sheila could or would really send him away. I don't doubt her loyalty to us, but she's too fond of her brute of a husband." Then abruptly, after some pondering, "You answered the telephone for Mrs. Tabor, as I understand. Did you hear the name, or recognize the voice?"
"No, sir," said I uncomfortably; for it sounded very much as if he were questioning his wife's word.
"It couldn't have been either of your Italian detectives, for instance?"
"I'm quite sure that it wasn't—that is, as sure as one can be of a voice over the 'phone. It was entirely different, a cooing, syrupy voice that seemed to be a woman's."
"Well," he said finally, "Carucci is the storm-center, in any case." He rose, and pressed the button by the door. "Ask Mrs. Carucci to step down to my study for a moment," he said to the maid.Then he turned to me. "Come in here, Crosby, and we'll settle this thing."
Sheila appeared, bubbling with triumph, and volubly eager to recount her experiences. Antonio would never dare to show the face of him to any of us again. Indeed, he had promised to take the first ship he could find and be off to sea, out of mischief. His black hand bother was all nonsense anyway; he was nothing to be afraid of, more than a black-faced bogey to frighten children. "An' he'll keep his promise, sir, to me," she wound up, "for he knows well what I'll be givin' him if he don't. He's only waitin' till his week's out, so he can draw his pay; then off he goes to New York, an' away on the first steamer that'll take him. 'An' good riddance to ye, too,' says I, 'an' if ever ye bring trouble on my people again, I'll make ye wish ye'd died a bachelor,' I says to him."
"He's going before that," said Mr. Tabor decidedly. "This is Tuesday; theCataloniasails on Thursday, and I'll get him a berth on her. What's more, I'll see that he takes it. You know where to find him, Sheila, I suppose?"
"Sure I do, sir. He'll be right where I saw him, workin' on the trolley. But it's hard on him, sir,losin' his week's pay, and bein' shipped off like a thief. Leave him find his own ship like a man."
"He's not being shipped off. I'm finding a good berth for him, which is more than he deserves, and you both ought to be grateful. Now listen, I want you to go to New York with him to-morrow. Take him to your own place, and don't lose sight of him until he is safe aboard and away. If he leaves you, notify me at once. I intend to be certain that he has left the country; do you understand?"
"An' who's to be takin' care av me poor lamb up-stairs all the while?" Sheila demanded, her brogue broadening, and her hands braced aggressively against her hips.
Mr. Tabor glanced quickly at me. "We can do that very well, as we have done. Of course your husband can be sent to prison for blackmail, if I can't otherwise be rid of him, but for your sake I should rather have him simply go away. If you are not willing to help, Sheila, you need only say so."
For a moment I thought she was going to refuse. But after a vain appeal or two, she gave way rather sullenly, and agreed to leave early in the morning.
"That's the pity of those people," Mr. Tabor said to me, as he closed the door after her. "Let the mando or be what he will, the woman he has possessed will hold of him to the end of her days; he can't quite lie away her faith or kick away her tenderness. I suppose it's beautiful in its way, but it gives a foothold to a lot of misery—well, now, Crosby, the rest is your part. I believe Sheila will keep her word; but it's against her husband, after all, and I want to make sure. Will you go to New York, too, and keep an eye on them until Carucci has gone? It's an unpleasant service to ask, but I can't do it for myself. And—since your vacation trip would naturally start from New York, it won't be far out of your way." I looked full at him to be sure that I understood, but I knew already that he had weighed his words.
"I see," I said slowly. "Is that all, or do you really want me to watch the Caruccis?"
"Certainly I do, if you will. I'm going to be very frank with you, Crosby, because you've deserved it. I did feel at one time that your former trip was managed with a little too much gallantry—that you had with the best intentions involved us in a melodrama, been the means of bringing these people down on us. But that wasn't just. Nobody could have done better in your place; and if any onewas to blame, it was Reid, for allowing you to go at that time of night. Of course, I was away from home when you started. Well, you've helped us and been loyal to us, though we had no claim upon you. It all comes down to this: Mrs. Tabor's health is a cause of great concern to me, and has been for a long time. I feel that she must be guarded from every possible shock. As I told you, there is a condition here which we are keeping to ourselves, which is dangerous to her, and which—you must take my word for it—may be aggravated by your continual presence. I'm eliminating, so far as I can, every disturbing element, and you are such an element, through no fault of yours. I'm not banishing you, I only ask that your visits to us be no more than occasional. Once in a while, a little later, we shall be very glad to see you, I hope; but not just now. Is that clear?"
"All but the reason for it," I said, "and I won't ask that."
"I won't make any protestations or apologies," he added very deliberately. "I think you trust us. And I prove that I trust you more than you know, in telling you as much as I have."
I suppose that a more sensible man in my placewould have done very differently. On his own confession, Mr. Tabor was telling me only a part of the truth; accident and warning had combined to make me suspicious of him; and I knew by my own experience how plausibly he could lie. But whether it was his age, or his deference, or the fact that he was Lady's father, all the Don Quixote in me came suddenly to the surface.
"I'll do as you say, sir," I said. "Let me know when I can do anything more," and I held out my hand.
His own was moist and hot; and I noticed under the stronger light of the hall, that the veins in his temples were swollen and throbbing and that he moved listlessly, as though he had been under a great strain. Before I could think about it, Lady parted the curtains of the living-room.
"What is it?" she asked quickly. "Has anything happened?"
"Only that I am going to New York to see Carucci sail away," I answered, "and I don't know just when I shall be back." It was plain that Mr. Tabor had not meant me to say so much; but that was my own affair.
She followed me outside the front door. "Thatmeans that you are going away— I knew it must come to that." She was twisting nervously at her chain.
"One word from you, and I won't go."
She shook her head. "No, I want you to—good-by."
"Promise me one thing," I said. "That you'll send me word if you want me."
"I promise," she answered quietly, "but I shall never have to keep that promise."
As I went out of the gate, Doctor Reid was coming in, and stopped to speak to me. His companion stood meanwhile some distance away; but it was not too dark for me to recognize the big man with the shrill precision of speech whom I had seen him bring secretly to the house before.
I set out the next morning in a humor of suspicious disillusion, all my quixotism turned sour under the dry sun. Put it how I would, I was playing the part of a spy: if Carucci himself was no better, the honest Irish eyes of his wife made me vaguely ashamed of my task. Having nevertheless undertaken it, I must put it through as well as might be. To follow the pair about would be futile, since I must presently be seen and recognized; but I conceivedthat merely by making sure of them at intervals during the next forty-eight hours I should be fulfilling my mission. I saw them safely on the train, and established myself in another car; and when we reached the Grand Central, I made straight for the scene of my midnight adventure. It was no less ugly by day than by night, and if possible even more malodorous. Push-carts vended unimaginable sweetmeats along the curb to a floating population of besmeared and screaming children; bleared slatterns, flabbily overflowing their bulging garments, jabbered in window and doorway; and the squat and dingy little saloon on the corner leered beerily at all. I waited half an hour before the Caruccis appeared. Then I made for a telephone in a state of disgusted relief, and called up Maclean.
"So you're in town now for a while," he said, in answer to my expurgated account of myself. "Well, I tell you how it is, Laurie, I'm pretty busy to-day. Let's have your number, an' I'll call you up later when I'm loose. You'll hang out at the Club, won't you?"
"I thought you wanted to see me about something."
"Oh,that. That wasn't anythin'— Why, yes,I'll lunch with you if you're in such a hurry, but I'll have to beat it right afterwards, 'cause I've got an assignment this afternoon."
At the Club, he plunged immediately into the irrelevant subject.
"Say, I've got to slide out after grub, an' go on a spook-hunt. There's this gang of Psychics or Spiritualists or whatever they are, up the line here, you see? And I'm coverin' one of their séances. Hamlet's old grandfather comes in an' rough-houses the furniture, an' Little Eva says a lot more than her prayers, an' you sit in a circle holdin' hands to get a line on the higher life. Don't you want to come along? You'll get some thrillin' moments."
"Is it a fake, then?" I asked.
"Oh, they're all fakes, I guess. All I ever ran across, anyway. But this death-fancier's the real squeeze—only raises the graveyard in private an' don't take any money, an' a whole lot of big doctors an' psychology profs are nutty about her, you see? It's the big show, the original New York company. You better come."
"All right," I said, "bring on your mysteries. I always thought there was something in that business, really; and here's a good chance. But look here,Mac, I want you to tell me what you heard from Carucci."
"Tell you the truth," said Maclean, "I'm a little bit afraid there may be something in spookery, myself. That's why I'd just as soon have you along."
"It won't do, old fellow," said I; "let's have the dago story."
Maclean fidgeted and glowered at the table. "It's like this, Laurie, you see? Those folks are friends of yours, an' this yarn of the guinea's is just a dirty bit of scandal, that's all over an' done with. An' I told you I didn't believe it anyhow. I hadn't ought to have said anythin' to you in the first place; and I'd rather not say anythin' about it now unless you want. 'Tain't anythin'."
"Mac, I've gone so far with the Tabors that I need to know all I can. If it's a lie, why all right. If it's true, why you can trust me and so can they. I wasn't born last week."
"Well," Mac grunted after a pause, "I'd better tell you, I guess, than let you go it blind—here you are. You know that Doctor Reid that's in with the Tabors?" He lowered his voice, leaning across the table. "Accordin' to the dago, he got mixed up with some woman abroad, an' married her. Thenhe leaves her, an' comes back, an' maybe he thinks she's dead. So he marries the Tabor girl, you see? Then the family get wise about the other woman, an' there's an awful row, an' finally they fix it up among them to move away, an' let on that Reid an' the daughter ain't married at all, not until this other woman dies, you see? An' that's what they're all keepin' so quiet about. Mind you, I don't believe it, myself."
"Why, it's impossible," I said. "It doesn't fit together. Miriam Tabor died a year after Reid married her, and why should they—"
"Sure, that's just it. Sure. I told you it was all over, an' anyhow it couldn't be so." He looked at his watch, and I noticed that the monogram on the back was cut in a quaint, antique fashion. "Come ahead—we've just got time."
I found his eyes and held them. "One minute, Mac. You're keeping back the point, so that I won't understand the story. It's no use."
"No, I ain't—honest—it's all over—well, damn it, Carucci says the Tabor girl didn't die. He says that's only the fake they put up, an' she's alive an' around the same as ever."
For a moment the words did not mean anything.I was groping madly among a mass of reminiscences, the noises in the house, the room with the presence in it, into which Carucci had broken, the tangled half-confidences of the family. Then the picture of Lady twisting nervously at the slender chain came uppermost in imagination, and through the eddying fog of my mind the whole nightmare leaped forth in a flash of horrible clearness, a score of interwoven circumstances outlining it as with threads of fire: the wedding-ring worn hidden at her breast, her raising of unaccountable barriers, her hopelessness, the family's fear of publicity and growing anxiety over my intimate presence among them, the cloud upon Mrs. Tabor, her aversion to Reid and the elaborate explanation of her slip in calling her daughter Miriam—I leaned my forehead on my hands.
Maclean had me by the shoulder: "Brace up, man," he muttered; "here, drink your drink. You'll have everybody looking at you."
"It's an infernal lie," I said dully.
"Sure it is." Maclean was thoroughly embarrassed and uncomfortable. "The way I work it out is, there's probably just enough in it somewhere for Carucci to build on. Maybe Reid did get into some mess or other 'way back before he was married, an' Carucci works that in with what he thinks he knows about the family now, an' dopes out this scandal in high life business. Or maybe he don't believe it himself, an' just has it in for the old man. You can't tell whether it's muck-rakin' or mud-slingin', but it's bound to be partly both, you see? I only told you so you'd know what was around. Well, are you comin'?"
I got my hat mechanically, and went out with him into the dust and the heat. The sense of unreality that had been upon me that early morning in the automobile was returned now in the breathless afternoon.The hazy slit of sky overhead, the stark light and shadow of the street, had the tones of a cheap colored photograph. The very smell of the air was like a memory of itself. The roar and jangle of the traffic seemed to come from a distance through a stillness that listened; and the wail of a hand-organ on the corner somehow completed and enhanced it all. I had only had one serious illness in my life, and that had been long ago; but I remembered that upon my first venturing out of doors after it, things had looked so; and I wondered for a moment whether I were going to be ill again. But that was nonsense. I was not a person to collapse upon the hearing of bad news; and besides, this news, I did not believe. Maclean had not believed it himself, in telling it to me. Only, he had so much less knowledge than I of its consistency. Grant for once that Lady was Miriam, that she was an only daughter—and they all would have done even as I had seen them doing. So Lady would have worn her ring, so feared our growing intimacy, so felt the burden of an abnormality not her own, so confessed to me the barrier and in extremity lied about her name, so the family would have shrunk from any notice, and striven to rid themselves of Carucciand of me. Straight this way pointed every line of mystery since the beginning; here was one logical motive for all. The explanation fitted every fact; only, I could not believe it of the people. A small cloud covered the sun, and the hot street turned suddenly gray. A horse clocked heavily around the corner, the rumble of the wheels behind him suddenly muffled as they struck the asphalt of the avenue. We were going up the steps of a house, a house closed for the summer with lead-colored board shutters over the lower windows, and an outer door of the same, on which the bright brass disk of a spring lock took the place of a knob. Maclean glanced again up at the number as he pressed the bell.
"Admit one gent and phantoms," he said sniffing. "Now you put your soul in a safe pocket, an' button it in. This gang, they'd snitch it in a second."
A low-voiced man in a cutaway coat opened the door, and we stood for a moment in a dark hallway smelling of cloth and furniture, while he and Maclean talked together in a half-whisper, I suppose explaining my presence. Then he opened another door at the side of the hall, and ushered us into the front room, where we half groped our way to a seat on the farther side, amid a low rustle of whispers.A grayish twilight filtered through the bright cracks of the shutters and between the closed folding doors at the rear. At first, the contrast with the glare of the street made it seem almost absolutely dark; and as my eyes gradually became adapted to the dimness, I remembered being shut in the closet when I was a child, and how the pale streaks from door-casing and keyhole had gradually diluted the gloom in just the same way. The recollection was so vivid that I half imagined here the same rustle and stuffiness of hanging clothes, and the sense of outrage at the shutting out of daylight. Then slowly the room formed itself out of darkness into grayness: the white ceiling, with its moving shadows and bulbous cloth-enfolded chandelier; the floor and furniture, all shrouded in summer covers of grayish denim; and the indefinite shade of the walls, lightened here and there by the square of a picture turned back outward, and darkened by the gloom of the corners and the blurred figures of the dozen people or so who sat about in twos and threes talking in whispers and mutterings. At the back of the room were large folding-doors, now tightly closed. In the corner on the side toward the hall stood a grand piano, enormous and bare under its pale covering; and theouter wall was broken by a marble chimneypiece of the fifties whereupon stood lumps of bric-à-brac tied up in bags. Most of the furniture was ranged rigidly against the wall; but in the center of the floor glimmered dully the uncovered mahogany of a heavy round table. In spite of the dark and the coolness, the air was close and stuffy, as if with the presence of a multitude; and I was a trifle surprised to find that we were actually so few.
"What sort of a crowd is this?" I asked Maclean in an undertone. "I can't make them out."
"Every sort. I mean every sort that's got the social drag or the prominence in this business to get in with the crowd. But inside of that, you get 'em all kinds, you see? The chap that let us in is a philosophy prof, an' a psychic researcher—Shelburgh, his name is. That old gink over there alone by himself is some other pioneer o' modern thought. I've got to find out about him later. The rest are mostly social lights, I guess. This is the Emmet Langdons' house, an' they're here somewhere. I can't see faces yet, can you?"
I shook my head. "We seem to be in Sunday edition company, anyway."
"Sure. All head-liners. Faces on file in every office. Hullo, here's the spookstress. They're off in a bunch!"
A rather heavy woman in a long drab dust-coat had come in, followed by Professor Shelburgh, who closed the door behind them. I gathered a vague impression, only half visual, that she was middle-aged and of that plumply blond type which ages by imperceptible degrees. She made me think, somehow, of a mass of molasses candy after it has been pulled into paleness and before it has hardened; but I could not tell whether this suggestion came from her voice or from her sleepily effusive manner or was a mere fancy about a physical presence which I could hardly see. She took off her hat and coat, and sat down at the center-table, pushing back her hair and rubbing her hands over her face as if to shake off drowsiness; while the others, except Maclean and myself and the gentleman in the corner, drew up their seats in a circle about the table, and placed their hands upon it. The professor counted the hands aloud in a perfunctory tone, and they all leaned forward, hand touching hand around the circle.
"Are we all right, Mrs. Mahl?" the professor asked.
"All right—all right—" cooed the medium; "conditions are good to-day—I can feel 'em comin' already—sing to me, somebody."
The old gentleman in the corner made a dull sound that might have been a snort or a suppressed cough. One of the women began to sing Suwanee River just above her breath, and the others joined in, half-humming, half-crooning. It was like the singing of children in its toneless unison, in its dragged rhythms and slurring from note to note; and the absurd resemblance of the scene to a game of Jenkins-Up gave the final touch of incongruity. These people, or some of them at least, awaited the very presence of the dead; all were in quest of the supernatural or the unknown. Here were the dimness, the fragile tension, the impalpable weight of mutuality, the atmosphere of a coming crisis; and this in the commonplace room, closed up for the summer, with the traffic of the avenue outside and the commonplace people within, incongruous in their ordinary clothes, sitting with their hands upon a table and humming a hackneyed melody a little off the key. There was an unreality about it all, a touchof theatrical tawdriness, of mummery and tinsel gold and canvas distances, an acuteness of that feeling which one always has in the climaxes of actual life that they can not be quite real because the setting is not strange enough. The monotonous sound and the close air made me drowsy, thinking with the hurried vividness of a doze. It was unnatural for mysteries to happen in a drawing-room; but then, mysteries were themselves unnatural, and must happen if at all in the world of there and then. Though it seemed somehow that a ghost should appear only upon the storied battlements of Elsinore to people in archaic dress, yet to Hamlet himself those surroundings were the scene of ordinary days; and the persons of all the wonder-stories had been in their own sight contemporary citizens. Macbeth saw Banquo at the dinner-table, and it was the people in the street who crowded to look upon the miracles.
The eventless waiting drew out interminably. There were long silences, then the humming of some other tune; and it was an episode when some one coughed or stirred. Yet the monotony, despite boredom and drowsiness, did not relax the nervous tension. I still felt that something was going to happen the next minute; the air grew closer and closer,and the odd sense of crowded human intimacy was more oppressive than at first; and the rigid regularity of Maclean's audible breathing was enough to tell me that even his skepticism was not proof against the same influence. The circle about the table were swaying their heads a little in time with their singing, while the old gentleman in the corner fidgeted uneasily. In the street outside, a child began to cry loudly, and was taken away still wailing around the corner. Surely, I thought, I of all people ought to understand that incongruous look of strange things happening in actual life: my own had been for weeks a nightmare and a romance; and even now I was groping mentally in the maze of a revelation that had the lurid logic of a melodrama, flawlessly plausible and incredible only because I was unwilling to believe. Carucci's story was a fabrication, because tangled marriages and family mysteries happen in books and newspapers, among printed people, not among those we know; yet melodrama itself builds with the material of actuality, and I had been living amid family mysteries. Such things do happen to some one; and that one must be to—to others—the reality that Lady was to me.
I started violently, and sat bolt upright, my hairtingling and every muscle tightened. A dull rapping, like the sound of a hammer upon wood covered with cloth, came from the table. The circle were silent, leaning back in their seats, their hands still joined before them. The medium had sunk down in her chair, her arms extended along the arms of it, so that those next her had to reach out to keep hold of her hands. And above the group I saw, or imagined that I saw, the vaguest conceivable cloudiness in mid-air, like mist on a foggy night or the glimmer seen inside closed eyelids after looking at a brightly lighted window. The more I tried to make sure that I saw it, the more I doubted whether it were not merely imagination. If you hold your spread hand before a dark background, you will seem to see a cloudy blur outlining the fingers; it was like that. The rapping was repeated more loudly, and through the throbbing in my ears and the almost suffocating oppression, I caught myself remembering the scene of the knocking at the gate in Macbeth. Then a voice began to speak: a querulous, throaty contralto that came in jerks and pauses. "Here you are again," it said; "I don't—want to talk—to any of you—I feel trouble—somewhere. Where's mother?"
"That's Miriam," said Professor Shelburgh, in the tone of casual recognition.
I do not know whether it was the shock of the coincident name, or only that the heat and the excitement of the day had reached their natural climax. But I grew suddenly hot and cold in waves; my skin crawled, and I felt at once a strangling hurry of heart-beats and a hollow nausea. For an instant, I set my teeth and tried to master it; but it was no use. I must get out into the open light and air, or I should make an exhibition of myself. I rose and tiptoed hurriedly across the room through an atmosphere that seemed like a heavy liquid, dizzily aware that Maclean had followed me a step or two and that the group around the table looked after me in surprise. Somehow, I found the door-handle. While I groped for my hat in the hallway, I heard the querulous jerky voices speaking again inside the room. And the next moment I was standing on the sun-baked sidewalk, blinking my eyes against the glare, and breathing in deep gulps. A flower-vendor called on the corner, above the distant drone of a hand-organ. Horses clumped heavily past. And a sparrow sat for a second upon the green top of a hydrant, then fluttered away, chattering.
For a block or so I still felt a little queer and giddy; but air and movement soon set all to rights; and after a walk back to the Club and a comfortable bath, I felt as well as ever, and rather wondered at my sudden upset. Evidently it had been only the heat and the nervous excitement of the day; and I had been foolish to take Scotch with my luncheon in such weather. I remembered that I had been out of gear a bit since the morning; Maclean's revelation must have shaken me more than I had admitted to myself; and it only wanted the startling coincidence of a "spirit" called Miriam to cap the climax. Besides, if you sit for two hours in a dark and stuffy room waiting for something strange to happen, something usually will. At any rate I had had an interesting experience. For a moment, it occurred to me that the episode might have been prearranged by Mac, with the idea of conveying to mein that way something which he did not wish to tell; but that was not like him, and was absurdly far-fetched besides. If the name had been taken somehow from my own thoughts, it was a remarkable case of telepathy; but no, it had been the professor, not the medium, who had named the voice; and by his tone, this had been a familiar one often heard before. If the name had any other than a chance connection with my affair, I could not fathom it.
There must be in all of us an instinct for the occult, an affinity for illicit short-cuts through difficulty that comes of mental and moral indolence—the instinct that causes the school-boy to look up the answer to his problem in the back of the book, and sends ignorance running to the soothsayer. Here was I, an educated man with what I hoped was not less than ordinary intelligence, in the grip of a crushing question; and instead of seeking certainty through rational search, I was mulling over a mummery which purported to be a communication from another world. I was no better than a kitchen-maid at her dream-book and fortune-teller. Carucci had said that Lady was secretly Reid's wife—or rather that he had gone through a false form of marriagewith her, having already a wife or an entanglement abroad. It was too horrible and too ruinous to all that I most hoped for to be true; it was not like the people concerned; but it was unbearably like all that I knew them to have said and done. I must know what the truth was; and the more I shrank from knowing, the more need for me to understand fully and at once. To sit still and wonder was mere cowardice. I was here to watch Carucci on Mr. Tabor's account: before he should leave the country, I would make it my business to question him on my own.
By the time I had shaken myself into so much common sense, the afternoon was far gone; and after a very early meal, I set out again for the East Side with the strained calmness of a man who walks into the jaws of a crisis to escape the devils that dance with their shadows behind him. There was a mockery of evening freshness in the air, though the heat still poured upward relentlessly from the sun-baked uncleanliness underfoot. The streets were so crowded with the weary turmoil of released workers, that I made my way against the stream with some difficulty; and as I neared my destination the difficulty increased. An eddying mass of humanity filled the narrow sidewalks and overflowed into thestreet among rumbling drays and trampling, scrambling horses: gangs of workmen with their tools, nervous and preoccupied business men, pallid clerks and stenographers, and droves of factory hands, men and women together, clamoring in a very Babel of languages. I noticed but one other man going toward the waterside—a heavily built fellow with a red handkerchief about his neck, some yards in front of me; and presently, as he turned sidewise to avoid being jostled into a lamp-post, I saw that it was Carucci. There could be no mistake: it was he, in his best clothes apparently, and alone, a dozen blocks from his own street. Sheila was nowhere in sight: however he had become separated from her, with or against her will, it was my business to follow him. Here was my chance for a talk with him alone; and as he passed his own corner and still kept on his way southward, it began to look as if I should be killing two birds with one stone.
I found it no very hard matter to keep him in sight; for the peculiar brightness of the handkerchief at his neck marked him a block away. There were other Italians, to be sure, but none so gorgeously bedecked, nor whose gait was so wondrous a combination of a roll, a stagger, and a strut. Toovertake him, however, among that crowd was not so easy; and I was afraid besides that coming suddenly upon him from behind might spoil my whole opportunity by making him angrily suspicious. I followed, accordingly, as best I might, for some distance; and when at last, with a swagger of grimy magnificence, he pushed through a pair of swinging doors, I thought that my chance had arrived. I waited a moment outside, that I might not seem too patently to have followed him; and as I stood there, a precocious small boy came up and looked me over.
"Yu're a fly cop, ain't yu?" he ventured, after a familiar inspection.
I smiled, and shook my head, somehow vaguely flattered.
"Aw come off, y'are too. I watched yu trailin' de guinea fer de las' four blocks."
"Shhh!" I whispered melodramatically.
"Sure t'ing. Yu can't fool me. Wot's de game, havin' yu're pal chase along so far behind?"
"You can search me," I said, frankly puzzled. "Is some one else following?"
"Surest t'ing you know. He's right on de job."
I looked the youngster over; he seemed to be telling the truth. But the detectives, I knew, were offthe case; and besides them and Sheila, who could have the slightest interest in Carucci? He might, to be sure, have committed crimes of which I knew nothing; but then, the police could have known nothing further against him at the time of our encounter in the field, and he could hardly have done anything since. I glanced in the direction in which I had come, and saw the unmistakable jerky figure of Doctor Reid coming around the corner.
Without stopping for a second look, I plunged inside. It was one of these really enormous halls which are scattered through the lower East Side, places half saloon, half music-hall, where tables fill a great floor space, where dusty, dyed palm trees vaunt a degraded splendor about the walls, and upon a low stage at the far end of the room, rouge-smeared slatterns dance in dreary simulation of a long-departed youth and mirth. A very fat and flabby woman was upon the stage as I entered, and the smoky air quivered to her raucous singsong and the jangle of a battered piano. Carucci was seated near by, watching the stumbling fingers of the pianist with the greatest interest and amiability. It pleased me vaguely that the woman did not interest him. Even when she had finished her crimeagainst harmony, and clambered from the stage to beg for treats about the room and so swell the bar receipts of the house, she only received a grinning and good-natured negative from Carucci. He seemed much pleased with the place, nodding and marking time to the music, and plainly puffed up at the grudging attentions of the waiter.
I had seated myself in an obscure corner near the door, where a person entering would pass me by unnoticed and where Carucci must have turned full about to see me. If Reid had really been following me, he would have appeared by this time; yet I could hardly imagine what other errand might have brought him to this part of town. If he had been following me, instead of Carucci—the very possibility made me angry. And just then Doctor Reid walked in at the door. There was another man with him, a very large man with a broken nose and what is known among the sporting fraternity as a cauliflower ear. They stood together, looking about them for a moment; and I bowed my head upon my folded arms. I did not want to talk to Doctor Reid in that place—or in any place, for that matter. When I looked up again, they were seated at Carucci's table, and the waiter was bringing updrinks for all three. They seemed to be talking with the greatest good fellowship. Reid, I noticed, barely tasted his drink, and watched his chance to pour the rest with a certain medical accuracy into the cuspidor beneath the table. I smiled to see how pleased he was with the way he was carrying off a perfectly evident part. Every minute or so he would reach forth his hand and give the Italian a couple of staccato pats in the region of his shoulder, pulling back his hand as quickly, and beaming the while with a radiance of stagy friendliness. The giant with him took things more as a matter of course. He wasted none of his drink, but drained each glass as soon as it was set before him, leaning between whiles with mighty elbows upon the table, his great disfigured hands cradling his brutal face. He seemed the last person in the world that a man of Reid's type would sit at table with. Perhaps Reid had reason to be afraid of Carucci and had employed this fellow as a sort of bodyguard.
Another human mockery was upon the stage; a tall, scrawny creature with some remnant of good looks and a voice that retained a surprising sweetness and charm. She sang unhappily, with an occasional scowl at the piano, where the sot on thestool jangled his notes tirelessly. Carucci was getting very drunk; he was commencing to wave his arms about, and now and then the splutter of his words reached even my far corner. As for Reid, he was plainly embarrassed and somewhat frightened. His hand rested beseechingly upon the Italian's arm, and he looked at his burly companion with evident appeal.
The big man grinned, and gave his order to the waiter with a leer that ended with thrown-back head and closed eyes. The waiter grinned in his turn and hurried off. I was getting more than a little interested. Carucci tossed off the fresh drink at a gulp, and pushed back his chair.
"I know," he shouted. "I knowa da troub' with all you. You can'ta fool Antonio,non cio-è?"
Reid had grown suddenly rigid in his seat. I got up from my table, and hurried across to them.
"Sit down," said the giant, and pushed Carucci back into his chair with a thud.
Carucci scowled sullenly. "Well, gimme da mon'. Gimme da mon'," he growled. "I needa da mon'," and he poured forth a torrent of Italian, threats for the most part about a secret he knew which he proposed to shout to the world unless somebody paidhim well. The room was fairly empty, but here and there people at the tables had begun to stare. The woman on the stage stumbled in her song, and paused wearily. Reid glanced again at his companion.
"Ah, give it to him, he's a good feller," laughed the giant. "Just play he's a bank, an' make a deposit."
Reid drew a roll of bills from his pocket, and began slowly counting them off. The giant grew impatient.
"Ah, hell," he said, "here, give 'em to me," and he snatched the roll from Reid's hand and gathered up the money from the table, crushing the whole into a bulging wad. "Here, you; take it all. That'll hold you for a while."
Reid got up in protest.
"Sit down, you dope," the other growled, "let him have it for a while."
Carucci grinned drunkenly, and crammed the handful carelessly into a deep pocket, swaying to his feet.
"Graz'. Alia ri'." His mouth opened loosely, and he slumped to the floor in a heap.
The waiter had come up, and with the giant'shelp lifted Carucci; and between them they half carried him to a doorway at the side of the room. They moved for all the world like three boon companions, arm in arm. The door closed behind them, and I glanced around. Nobody appeared to be concerned in the least; and even Reid, almost dancing with nervousness, no longer attracted attention.
"See here," I said, "did you people drug that fellow, Reid?"
He whirled upon me. "You keep out of this, Crosby," he stuttered; "nothing to do with you, nothing whatever."
"Well," I answered, "Mr. Tabor asked me to keep an eye on him, that's all. What am I to report? What are you going to do with him?"
"Um, humph! That's why you're here, then. Beg pardon, I'm sure, but you startled me. Bad business. Bad business. But the man had to be made sure of. Getting dangerous. Man with me drugged him. Chloral, you know. Won't harm him. Not at all."
The giant was coming back. "Here's your roll, mister," he said, with an unfriendly glance at me. "Count 'em. I took out my twenty."
"Is he all right?" Reid asked.
"Sure!" grinned the other. "He won't wake up till morning, and then he'll be out o' sight o' land. I got a nice ship picked out fer him."