Chapter V.Our First ClewThe house in which Moore had taken his rooms was of the ordinary brown-stone type and had once been occupied, presumably, by a single family. Now, owing to changes in the neighborhood and ever-mounting rents, it had been split up into apartments.The basement was occupied, he told me, by a grocer, his wife and two children. The first floor served as office and home for a young doctor, while the second floor had been subdivided into two smaller apartments of three rooms each, with a bathroom common to both, Of these two, the front apartment belonged to a returned soldier and his somewhat shrill-voiced French bride. Moore had rented the back part of this floor, consisting of a bedroom, a small kitchen and a living-room. The third floor was unoccupied, but was similar in design to the second.The house was a large square one, each apartment on the second floor being self-contained and well-lighted, with the common bathroom between, lit only by a small shaft and skylight above. The door to Moore’s rooms was just at the head of the stairs and opened into his living-room. This room looked out on to the back garden, so called, as did his smaller bedroom beyond. His kitchen was the same width as the hall and was the continuation of it, but opened into his living-room and not into the hall, so that the rooms had a single door into the hall. This was fitted with a Yale lock.The common bathroom was, of course, the difficulty and was probably the reason why he had found the rooms empty. With the somewhat embarrassing sociability of some old southern and a few old New York houses, this bathroom had three doors, one into the hall, one into the front flat, and one at the back, into what was now Moore’s bedroom. Of these, only the door into the hall was now in use, the other two being nailed up.There was only one door-bell to the house, which rang in the basement, and for a small monthly gratuity the grocer’s wife or one of her numerous children opened the door for all visitors. The tenants had keys.Moore got home first and was waiting at the front door of the house to let me in. He ushered me proudly into his living-room, furnished in seedy-looking plush and china ornaments that looked as if they had been manufactured by an absent-minded anarchist in his moments of relaxation. The door was open into his bedroom beyond, and the first thing I noticed was a lot of wire lying on the floor in there.“What’s all that—the telephone?” I asked.“Yes, I have put one instrument in already, and I have the batteries and the instrument for your end. We’ll put that in later. I’m a bit of an electrician and the job was an easy one. As for my own instrument, I’m going to keep it in my clothes closet and keep the closet locked, you see. It will have a buzzer, but not a loud one, so that you can get me when I’m here, but mostly I imagine I’ll be calling you up. You see, I’ll have to have a fashionable studio or something somewhere, to carry out my part of the dilettante lounge lizard. This place would never do as my official residence from a social point of view. But it ought to be handy as an ‘earth’ perhaps.”“What’s the idea of keeping it in the closet?” I asked.“Well, some one will have to clean the room, and I don’t want some estimable cleaning woman messing about with it. Trust nobody is our motto, old boy.”“And my end of it?”“Oh, that doesn’t matter so much. You can trust Larry, can’t you? We’ll put it in your bedroom, and you can tell Larry not to let any one else in there. How’s that?”“That’s all right I should think,” I told him. “Now, suppose we go over to my rooms and finish the job on the other instrument, and then we can do the wiring later, when all’s quiet?”“Right,” he said; “and, Clayton! I forgot to tell you that you have an account with the Guaranty Trust on which you can draw up to any amount not out of bounds of reason. Don’t forget that, because you may need it. You won’t need to itemize your expenses. I fixed that up with the Chief. Now let’s go.”We spent an insane sort of a night. First of all we installed the other instrument, batteries and induction coil in my bedroom, with an additional buzzer in Larry’s room for safety. We had no trouble in getting the thing into working order.But we decided that it was too early for the wiring, so Moore and I sat talking and smoking until about 2 a.m. I also called in Larry, and told him that if the buzzer rang at any time in my absence he was to drop everything else and answer it, and to follow Moore’s instructions to the limit.Moore did another good bit of work that night all on his own too, for he won Larry over completely.It was amusing to watch. He got me to call Larry in, and then he jumped to his feet, for the first time dropping his drawl and his affected manner. “Look here, Clayton,” he said, “we’re all in this together. Suppose you introduce me, like a good fellow?”I played up of course, and introduced them in due form. Moore shook hands, smiling in a taking way he had. “Glad to meet you, Larry,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you and how you’ve stood by Clayton here. Real friends aren’t so easily come by.”Larry was covered with confusion, “Sure, sor,” he stammered, “I ain’t done much.” Then he turned fiery red.“Nonsense! And look here, Larry. Clayton has let me in on this search of his, so the three of us are all in it together now. And I’m hoping that you’ll stand by me too, if the occasion arises. From what I’ve heard of you, I can’t think of a man I’d rather have in a pinch!” He held out his hand again.Larry hesitated a moment, and then reached out and took it in a grasp of iron, his confidence suddenly returning with the sudden and obvious liking induced by Moore’s charm.“I’ll do that same, sor,” he said simply.Now I had not said a word to Moore about Larry’s distrust of him. But Moore must have sensed it, and my respect for my fellow-worker went up another notch.It was some time after this that the melodramatic part of the evening began. Larry entered into the spirit of the thing. He ripped off the baseboard in my bedroom and ran the telephone wires along it to the window. Here, with a drill he bored a hole straight through the outside wall of the house and ran the wires out on to the fire-escape. Then he replaced the baseboard, so that not an inch of wire showed in the room itself. We put the instrument on a tiny table and put a big chair in front of it, and then nothing showed at all.When this was finished we climbed out on to the fire-escape and prepared for the big task.Luckily for us a rain-pipe ran straight down alongside the fire-escape to the ground. Moore had bought thousands of brads, and with these we fastened the double wire to the brickwork, getting the wire as nearly as possible behind the pipe and out of sight. But it was awkward work, leaning far out from the fire-escape and nailing the wire in behind like that.This was not the worst of it, however. For we had to work in pitch darkness and without making a sound. We dared not flash a light, for fear we might be seen from one of the houses near by. And the tiny noise we made with the hammer kept us on thequi vivemost of the time.There was a funny side to it too. As we clambered lower and lower on the iron structure, we passed window after window of respectable apartment owners, now lost in slumber and “little dreaming” of the fell deeds that were going on just outside their windows. Once Larry slipped and swore under his breath in the most approved style, and I grabbed for him, shaking with laughter, and bade him keep quiet. Somehow, working with Moore lent the whole business a spice of melodramatic comedy that stood out in striking relief against the dark background of what came after. But our work that night, arduous as it was, was glamored with a humorous good-fellowship very welcome after six months of despairing anxiety.We reached the ground without mishap, unrolling and tacking up the wire as we went. There we ran it along the base of the building against the ground and up to a wooden fence that divided the yard of the apartment house from the one next door. We covered it as well as we could with dirt so that it would not show.We had little difficulty with the wire. The fence was a high affair made of wooden palings dovetailed together and finished off at the top with a flat board, about two inches wide, which extended out beyond the palings a little on either side. Larry ran the wires along the top of this fence, under the eave of this top board, where it could not be seen, until he reached the back fence. We climbed this and ran the wire along the side fence of the yard of Moore’s house and up to the house itself. But here we stuck. For while there was a rain-pipe near his bedroom window, there was no fire-escape to help us reach it. But Moore solved this problem. He went back the way we had come, climbed the fire-escape again to the eighth floor and let himself quietly out the front door of my apartment, shutting the door after him. Then he went round the block to the front door of his new abode, let himself in with his key and went up to his own rooms. He had an ordinary telephone here, and on this he called up the young doctor who lived on the floor below, begging that infuriated young man to hurry around to my apartment.In the meantime I hurried back up the fire-escape and prepared to receive him.As soon as the doctor had dressed and started on his visit, Moore descended and opened his front door with a skeleton key. He made his way to the doctor’s back windows, and, with the aid of Larry from below, managed to run the wire up to where it could be reached from his own window. At the same time Larry made a burglarious entry into the doctor’s rooms through the window, and after shutting the windows and leaving all tidy, he and Moore closed the doctor’s front door again and went on up to Moore’s rooms, where, with his drill, Larry brought the wire through the house wall and along under the footboard to the closet, connected it up and made a finished job of our telephone.In the meantime I had hastily got out of my coat and vest, changed my canvas shoes for bedroom slippers, and had climbed into a dressing-gown and mussed up my hair. When the sleepy young doctor got there I was looking pale and interesting and suffering from a variety of afflictions obviously beyond his simple powers of diagnosis. I think he vacillated between appendicitis, galloping consumption and epileptic fits, but I must admit my descriptions of my symptoms was both confused and confusing. Finally, however, he gave it up, mentally washed his hands of the case, and prescribed a simple remedy which I recognized as something in the nature of a faith cure. He then advised me to consult a specialist and took his annoyed and sleepy departure. But I had kept him there for nearly an hour, and I knew that Moore and Larry must have finished their job.Moore had insisted upon abona-fidecall, as otherwise, if we had sent the young doctor on a wild-goose chase, he would have become suspicious and looked for and possibly found traces of Moore’s presence in his rooms, which might have led to all sorts of complications. Anyhow, I never paid a doctor’s bill with a stronger sense of value received than when I paid his a little later.Larry returned about dawn and, as the doorman knew him, got back to the flat again without difficulty.Our telephone was completed without a hitch and was in running order, as I soon ascertained by ringing up Moore. Then we settled down to a well-earned sleep, Larry at least in a state of pleasurable excitement.The following week marked the début of Moore and myself in the social game. Moore took a studio in Greenwich Village, furnished it superbly, dabbled in sculpture and invited his ever-growing circle of friends and acquaintances to come to tea, discuss art and view what he described to me as his atrocities.For my part, I visited old friends in search of introductions in what I thought might be likely quarters and followed these up assiduously. Moore maintained his dilettante pose and went in for the milder forms of dissipations and indiscretions, doing his best to attain the appearance of evil without boring himself with the thing itself. I followed his advice and took to myself the pose of a disillusioned worldling of esthetic tastes.Night after night we held long conversations over our telephone, comparing notes so as to avoid each other’s tracks as much as possible. In this way we seldom saw each other.However, I came across his traces once or twice. In answer to a charming letter from Mrs. Furneau, I called and did my best to convince her that I had given up all hope of finding Margaret. I was cynical, disillusioned and self-centered to a point where I wondered how she could stand having me in the house.However, she was most charming and sympathetic, introduced me to a number of her friends and invited me to become a regular caller at her pretty brown-stone house. She had a distinct charm of manner, arising from her perfect confidence in herself and her power to please, and I found her circle a wide one and promising for my purpose. Here one afternoon, much to my amazement, I overheard two feminine social butterflies discussing Moore.“You know, my dear, he must have heaps of money to keep that place going—and he never works except at his sculpting, and I’m sure he never makes any money at that.”“They say he’s fearfully dissipated,” cut in the other. “But I thought he was charming. Such a bored air and so perfectly self-possessed. He told me that I understood him as no one else did.”“Yes, I dare say,” answered the first, unsheathing a claw. “He really needs some pure young thing like you to take him in hand and reform him. It’s such a pity to see him going to pieces like that.”At this point I moved away, overcome by my emotions; but I repeated the whole conversation to Moore later on and advised him to seize his chance of reform if she gave it to him.But it was about ten days after we first launched ourselves upon society that Moore got what he believed to be our first clew.I had come home late from a small private dance, bewildered and bored by the shifting panorama of small intrigues and light love affairs impossible to avoid seeing.I sat in my bedroom, slowly undressing and wondering what future lay ahead for these girls when some of their charm was gone, when I heard the familiar buzz of our private line. This must be something special, because we had already compared notes of our evening’s plans at dinner-time.Moore’s voice was tense. “Hello, Clayton? Good! Damned glad you’re home. Old man, I think there’s something stirring at last!”“Great! What is it?”“Well, you know I went up to a party on Riverside Drive to-night. My host made his pile doing construction work for innocent and confiding suburban municipalities. Now I guess he’s trying to drown his memories in one of the finest cellars in New York and finding plenty of friends to help him. I never saw him before and I never want to see him again, except in the way of our business, but I got what I think is a clew there, and that’s the main thing.”“Go on, I’m listening.”“It was just before I left. I’d gone to one of the bedrooms used as a men’s cloak-room, to get my hat. The party had been pretty wild—one woman nearly had her clothes torn off her by our playful and animated host—and I was straightening up a bit when a young fellow blew in, looking forhishat.“I’d already spotted him as a well-known young rip, with a lot more money than either wits or decency, and I’d been casually introduced to him in the early part of the evening. But now he fell on me like a long-lost friend. ‘Not a bad party, eh?’ said he. ‘But the women aren’t up to much. Too damned stand-offish for my taste. Only the same old booze, too. Gee, you oughta been on the party I was on th’ other nigh’. Say, I thought I was ’n heaven.’“I tried to shake him off and get out of there, but he wasn’t having any. ‘Wai’ a minut’, I wan’ tell ya ’bout it,’ he said, in an injured tone, so I waited.“He held a waving finger before me and went on: ‘I’ was like par’dise, I tell ya. I dunno what they gave us, but I was lost to the worl’ till the next mornin’. They kept me there all nigh’.’“ ‘Where was it?’ I asked him.“ ‘Damned ’finno. Somewhere out town. But ol’ Babylon and Corinth hadn’t a thing on that party. I paid $200 to go, an’ I wouldn’t ’a’ missed it for a thousand—girls an’ divans and strange things to drink that gave ya the most won’erful dreams, Gee, what a party! They tol’ me special that I wasn’t even to mention it, but that’s only a a’vertising dodge. Ya can’t fool me. That was one of the conditions. Made me swear not to tell before they’d take me!’ He went off into fits of laughter here.“Some one else came in just then,” Moore continued, “and I noticed that the new-comer stared pretty hard for an instant at the young hopeful. I don’t know why. Anyhow this fellow had some more to say that convinced me he might be useful.”“Sounds like drugs, doesn’t it?” I cut in.“Wait,” Moore continued. “When this young fellow had stopped laughing I pumped him gently about the party.“ ‘I dunno,’ he said, ‘what they gave us. Must ’a’ been some kind of drug, for I had a rotten head the next day.’“I asked him again where it was.“ ‘Search me,’ he answered. ‘They took me there in a closed car and brought me away in one. Mighta been anywhere a’most.’“At this point,” Moore continued, “the fellow looked up and caught the new-comer’s eye and it seemed to sober him. He smiled in a sickly sort of a way and began a wild search for his hat. The other man went out right after that. But I had a good look at him, and I think I know who he is. Anyhow, the young rip wouldn’t talk any more—seemed scared and sobered—and I came away. But I got the young fellow’s address from him.”“What’s your idea?” I asked.“Why, follow him up and try to find out who asked him to the party. Then work it so that you or I get an invitation.”“Sounds promising,” I said.“You bet it does,” said Moore. “Anyhow, I’ll follow it up to-morrow. I’ll try to get in touch with the young rip and wheedle some information out of him. But I knew you’d want to know about it first. Besides, it’s as well to keep in touch with each other’s movements, I think. This young fellow lives on West 44th Street, in the Branscombe. I’ll go up there to-morrow afternoon.”“Right. Good luck!” I answered with a good deal of feeling.“Any news at your end?” Moore inquired.“Not yet,” I told him reluctantly, and we rang off.But, as you shall see, that night marked the end of the overture and the rising of the curtain on the first act of what was to prove a very serious drama.
The house in which Moore had taken his rooms was of the ordinary brown-stone type and had once been occupied, presumably, by a single family. Now, owing to changes in the neighborhood and ever-mounting rents, it had been split up into apartments.
The basement was occupied, he told me, by a grocer, his wife and two children. The first floor served as office and home for a young doctor, while the second floor had been subdivided into two smaller apartments of three rooms each, with a bathroom common to both, Of these two, the front apartment belonged to a returned soldier and his somewhat shrill-voiced French bride. Moore had rented the back part of this floor, consisting of a bedroom, a small kitchen and a living-room. The third floor was unoccupied, but was similar in design to the second.
The house was a large square one, each apartment on the second floor being self-contained and well-lighted, with the common bathroom between, lit only by a small shaft and skylight above. The door to Moore’s rooms was just at the head of the stairs and opened into his living-room. This room looked out on to the back garden, so called, as did his smaller bedroom beyond. His kitchen was the same width as the hall and was the continuation of it, but opened into his living-room and not into the hall, so that the rooms had a single door into the hall. This was fitted with a Yale lock.
The common bathroom was, of course, the difficulty and was probably the reason why he had found the rooms empty. With the somewhat embarrassing sociability of some old southern and a few old New York houses, this bathroom had three doors, one into the hall, one into the front flat, and one at the back, into what was now Moore’s bedroom. Of these, only the door into the hall was now in use, the other two being nailed up.
There was only one door-bell to the house, which rang in the basement, and for a small monthly gratuity the grocer’s wife or one of her numerous children opened the door for all visitors. The tenants had keys.
Moore got home first and was waiting at the front door of the house to let me in. He ushered me proudly into his living-room, furnished in seedy-looking plush and china ornaments that looked as if they had been manufactured by an absent-minded anarchist in his moments of relaxation. The door was open into his bedroom beyond, and the first thing I noticed was a lot of wire lying on the floor in there.
“What’s all that—the telephone?” I asked.
“Yes, I have put one instrument in already, and I have the batteries and the instrument for your end. We’ll put that in later. I’m a bit of an electrician and the job was an easy one. As for my own instrument, I’m going to keep it in my clothes closet and keep the closet locked, you see. It will have a buzzer, but not a loud one, so that you can get me when I’m here, but mostly I imagine I’ll be calling you up. You see, I’ll have to have a fashionable studio or something somewhere, to carry out my part of the dilettante lounge lizard. This place would never do as my official residence from a social point of view. But it ought to be handy as an ‘earth’ perhaps.”
“What’s the idea of keeping it in the closet?” I asked.
“Well, some one will have to clean the room, and I don’t want some estimable cleaning woman messing about with it. Trust nobody is our motto, old boy.”
“And my end of it?”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter so much. You can trust Larry, can’t you? We’ll put it in your bedroom, and you can tell Larry not to let any one else in there. How’s that?”
“That’s all right I should think,” I told him. “Now, suppose we go over to my rooms and finish the job on the other instrument, and then we can do the wiring later, when all’s quiet?”
“Right,” he said; “and, Clayton! I forgot to tell you that you have an account with the Guaranty Trust on which you can draw up to any amount not out of bounds of reason. Don’t forget that, because you may need it. You won’t need to itemize your expenses. I fixed that up with the Chief. Now let’s go.”
We spent an insane sort of a night. First of all we installed the other instrument, batteries and induction coil in my bedroom, with an additional buzzer in Larry’s room for safety. We had no trouble in getting the thing into working order.
But we decided that it was too early for the wiring, so Moore and I sat talking and smoking until about 2 a.m. I also called in Larry, and told him that if the buzzer rang at any time in my absence he was to drop everything else and answer it, and to follow Moore’s instructions to the limit.
Moore did another good bit of work that night all on his own too, for he won Larry over completely.
It was amusing to watch. He got me to call Larry in, and then he jumped to his feet, for the first time dropping his drawl and his affected manner. “Look here, Clayton,” he said, “we’re all in this together. Suppose you introduce me, like a good fellow?”
I played up of course, and introduced them in due form. Moore shook hands, smiling in a taking way he had. “Glad to meet you, Larry,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you and how you’ve stood by Clayton here. Real friends aren’t so easily come by.”
Larry was covered with confusion, “Sure, sor,” he stammered, “I ain’t done much.” Then he turned fiery red.
“Nonsense! And look here, Larry. Clayton has let me in on this search of his, so the three of us are all in it together now. And I’m hoping that you’ll stand by me too, if the occasion arises. From what I’ve heard of you, I can’t think of a man I’d rather have in a pinch!” He held out his hand again.
Larry hesitated a moment, and then reached out and took it in a grasp of iron, his confidence suddenly returning with the sudden and obvious liking induced by Moore’s charm.
“I’ll do that same, sor,” he said simply.
Now I had not said a word to Moore about Larry’s distrust of him. But Moore must have sensed it, and my respect for my fellow-worker went up another notch.
It was some time after this that the melodramatic part of the evening began. Larry entered into the spirit of the thing. He ripped off the baseboard in my bedroom and ran the telephone wires along it to the window. Here, with a drill he bored a hole straight through the outside wall of the house and ran the wires out on to the fire-escape. Then he replaced the baseboard, so that not an inch of wire showed in the room itself. We put the instrument on a tiny table and put a big chair in front of it, and then nothing showed at all.
When this was finished we climbed out on to the fire-escape and prepared for the big task.
Luckily for us a rain-pipe ran straight down alongside the fire-escape to the ground. Moore had bought thousands of brads, and with these we fastened the double wire to the brickwork, getting the wire as nearly as possible behind the pipe and out of sight. But it was awkward work, leaning far out from the fire-escape and nailing the wire in behind like that.
This was not the worst of it, however. For we had to work in pitch darkness and without making a sound. We dared not flash a light, for fear we might be seen from one of the houses near by. And the tiny noise we made with the hammer kept us on thequi vivemost of the time.
There was a funny side to it too. As we clambered lower and lower on the iron structure, we passed window after window of respectable apartment owners, now lost in slumber and “little dreaming” of the fell deeds that were going on just outside their windows. Once Larry slipped and swore under his breath in the most approved style, and I grabbed for him, shaking with laughter, and bade him keep quiet. Somehow, working with Moore lent the whole business a spice of melodramatic comedy that stood out in striking relief against the dark background of what came after. But our work that night, arduous as it was, was glamored with a humorous good-fellowship very welcome after six months of despairing anxiety.
We reached the ground without mishap, unrolling and tacking up the wire as we went. There we ran it along the base of the building against the ground and up to a wooden fence that divided the yard of the apartment house from the one next door. We covered it as well as we could with dirt so that it would not show.
We had little difficulty with the wire. The fence was a high affair made of wooden palings dovetailed together and finished off at the top with a flat board, about two inches wide, which extended out beyond the palings a little on either side. Larry ran the wires along the top of this fence, under the eave of this top board, where it could not be seen, until he reached the back fence. We climbed this and ran the wire along the side fence of the yard of Moore’s house and up to the house itself. But here we stuck. For while there was a rain-pipe near his bedroom window, there was no fire-escape to help us reach it. But Moore solved this problem. He went back the way we had come, climbed the fire-escape again to the eighth floor and let himself quietly out the front door of my apartment, shutting the door after him. Then he went round the block to the front door of his new abode, let himself in with his key and went up to his own rooms. He had an ordinary telephone here, and on this he called up the young doctor who lived on the floor below, begging that infuriated young man to hurry around to my apartment.
In the meantime I hurried back up the fire-escape and prepared to receive him.
As soon as the doctor had dressed and started on his visit, Moore descended and opened his front door with a skeleton key. He made his way to the doctor’s back windows, and, with the aid of Larry from below, managed to run the wire up to where it could be reached from his own window. At the same time Larry made a burglarious entry into the doctor’s rooms through the window, and after shutting the windows and leaving all tidy, he and Moore closed the doctor’s front door again and went on up to Moore’s rooms, where, with his drill, Larry brought the wire through the house wall and along under the footboard to the closet, connected it up and made a finished job of our telephone.
In the meantime I had hastily got out of my coat and vest, changed my canvas shoes for bedroom slippers, and had climbed into a dressing-gown and mussed up my hair. When the sleepy young doctor got there I was looking pale and interesting and suffering from a variety of afflictions obviously beyond his simple powers of diagnosis. I think he vacillated between appendicitis, galloping consumption and epileptic fits, but I must admit my descriptions of my symptoms was both confused and confusing. Finally, however, he gave it up, mentally washed his hands of the case, and prescribed a simple remedy which I recognized as something in the nature of a faith cure. He then advised me to consult a specialist and took his annoyed and sleepy departure. But I had kept him there for nearly an hour, and I knew that Moore and Larry must have finished their job.
Moore had insisted upon abona-fidecall, as otherwise, if we had sent the young doctor on a wild-goose chase, he would have become suspicious and looked for and possibly found traces of Moore’s presence in his rooms, which might have led to all sorts of complications. Anyhow, I never paid a doctor’s bill with a stronger sense of value received than when I paid his a little later.
Larry returned about dawn and, as the doorman knew him, got back to the flat again without difficulty.
Our telephone was completed without a hitch and was in running order, as I soon ascertained by ringing up Moore. Then we settled down to a well-earned sleep, Larry at least in a state of pleasurable excitement.
The following week marked the début of Moore and myself in the social game. Moore took a studio in Greenwich Village, furnished it superbly, dabbled in sculpture and invited his ever-growing circle of friends and acquaintances to come to tea, discuss art and view what he described to me as his atrocities.
For my part, I visited old friends in search of introductions in what I thought might be likely quarters and followed these up assiduously. Moore maintained his dilettante pose and went in for the milder forms of dissipations and indiscretions, doing his best to attain the appearance of evil without boring himself with the thing itself. I followed his advice and took to myself the pose of a disillusioned worldling of esthetic tastes.
Night after night we held long conversations over our telephone, comparing notes so as to avoid each other’s tracks as much as possible. In this way we seldom saw each other.
However, I came across his traces once or twice. In answer to a charming letter from Mrs. Furneau, I called and did my best to convince her that I had given up all hope of finding Margaret. I was cynical, disillusioned and self-centered to a point where I wondered how she could stand having me in the house.
However, she was most charming and sympathetic, introduced me to a number of her friends and invited me to become a regular caller at her pretty brown-stone house. She had a distinct charm of manner, arising from her perfect confidence in herself and her power to please, and I found her circle a wide one and promising for my purpose. Here one afternoon, much to my amazement, I overheard two feminine social butterflies discussing Moore.
“You know, my dear, he must have heaps of money to keep that place going—and he never works except at his sculpting, and I’m sure he never makes any money at that.”
“They say he’s fearfully dissipated,” cut in the other. “But I thought he was charming. Such a bored air and so perfectly self-possessed. He told me that I understood him as no one else did.”
“Yes, I dare say,” answered the first, unsheathing a claw. “He really needs some pure young thing like you to take him in hand and reform him. It’s such a pity to see him going to pieces like that.”
At this point I moved away, overcome by my emotions; but I repeated the whole conversation to Moore later on and advised him to seize his chance of reform if she gave it to him.
But it was about ten days after we first launched ourselves upon society that Moore got what he believed to be our first clew.
I had come home late from a small private dance, bewildered and bored by the shifting panorama of small intrigues and light love affairs impossible to avoid seeing.
I sat in my bedroom, slowly undressing and wondering what future lay ahead for these girls when some of their charm was gone, when I heard the familiar buzz of our private line. This must be something special, because we had already compared notes of our evening’s plans at dinner-time.
Moore’s voice was tense. “Hello, Clayton? Good! Damned glad you’re home. Old man, I think there’s something stirring at last!”
“Great! What is it?”
“Well, you know I went up to a party on Riverside Drive to-night. My host made his pile doing construction work for innocent and confiding suburban municipalities. Now I guess he’s trying to drown his memories in one of the finest cellars in New York and finding plenty of friends to help him. I never saw him before and I never want to see him again, except in the way of our business, but I got what I think is a clew there, and that’s the main thing.”
“Go on, I’m listening.”
“It was just before I left. I’d gone to one of the bedrooms used as a men’s cloak-room, to get my hat. The party had been pretty wild—one woman nearly had her clothes torn off her by our playful and animated host—and I was straightening up a bit when a young fellow blew in, looking forhishat.
“I’d already spotted him as a well-known young rip, with a lot more money than either wits or decency, and I’d been casually introduced to him in the early part of the evening. But now he fell on me like a long-lost friend. ‘Not a bad party, eh?’ said he. ‘But the women aren’t up to much. Too damned stand-offish for my taste. Only the same old booze, too. Gee, you oughta been on the party I was on th’ other nigh’. Say, I thought I was ’n heaven.’
“I tried to shake him off and get out of there, but he wasn’t having any. ‘Wai’ a minut’, I wan’ tell ya ’bout it,’ he said, in an injured tone, so I waited.
“He held a waving finger before me and went on: ‘I’ was like par’dise, I tell ya. I dunno what they gave us, but I was lost to the worl’ till the next mornin’. They kept me there all nigh’.’
“ ‘Where was it?’ I asked him.
“ ‘Damned ’finno. Somewhere out town. But ol’ Babylon and Corinth hadn’t a thing on that party. I paid $200 to go, an’ I wouldn’t ’a’ missed it for a thousand—girls an’ divans and strange things to drink that gave ya the most won’erful dreams, Gee, what a party! They tol’ me special that I wasn’t even to mention it, but that’s only a a’vertising dodge. Ya can’t fool me. That was one of the conditions. Made me swear not to tell before they’d take me!’ He went off into fits of laughter here.
“Some one else came in just then,” Moore continued, “and I noticed that the new-comer stared pretty hard for an instant at the young hopeful. I don’t know why. Anyhow this fellow had some more to say that convinced me he might be useful.”
“Sounds like drugs, doesn’t it?” I cut in.
“Wait,” Moore continued. “When this young fellow had stopped laughing I pumped him gently about the party.
“ ‘I dunno,’ he said, ‘what they gave us. Must ’a’ been some kind of drug, for I had a rotten head the next day.’
“I asked him again where it was.
“ ‘Search me,’ he answered. ‘They took me there in a closed car and brought me away in one. Mighta been anywhere a’most.’
“At this point,” Moore continued, “the fellow looked up and caught the new-comer’s eye and it seemed to sober him. He smiled in a sickly sort of a way and began a wild search for his hat. The other man went out right after that. But I had a good look at him, and I think I know who he is. Anyhow, the young rip wouldn’t talk any more—seemed scared and sobered—and I came away. But I got the young fellow’s address from him.”
“What’s your idea?” I asked.
“Why, follow him up and try to find out who asked him to the party. Then work it so that you or I get an invitation.”
“Sounds promising,” I said.
“You bet it does,” said Moore. “Anyhow, I’ll follow it up to-morrow. I’ll try to get in touch with the young rip and wheedle some information out of him. But I knew you’d want to know about it first. Besides, it’s as well to keep in touch with each other’s movements, I think. This young fellow lives on West 44th Street, in the Branscombe. I’ll go up there to-morrow afternoon.”
“Right. Good luck!” I answered with a good deal of feeling.
“Any news at your end?” Moore inquired.
“Not yet,” I told him reluctantly, and we rang off.
But, as you shall see, that night marked the end of the overture and the rising of the curtain on the first act of what was to prove a very serious drama.