Matters which he did not understand were nevertheless an inevitable part of his daily routine. He had long since ceased to allow any diversion from the hard business in hand by even the most fascinating of speculation. And obstacles did not halt him long. Like the ant, he never stopped to scale them: he went around. It was very much quicker—and time was of importance.
As if it were of trifling consequence, he handed back the letter from Good. "I'll phone you when we learn anything," he said indifferently.
"You think—you can find him?"
The detective raised his palms. "That is hard to say."
"But you will do your best?"
"That goes without saying."
He smiled quizzically as he spoke. For the first time he noticed how attractive his client was. A vague regret flitted across his mind that if he disappeared there would be no one to seek him with such eagerness. He dismissed the thought quickly, however. One in his position had no time for such nonsense. Time was too valuable to be wasted in dreaming. The Woman faded: only the Case remained. He fell to drumming on the desk with his pencil, and Judith realised that he asked nothing further of her. She thanked him and rose. Silently he opened a private door leading to the hallway, bowed courteously as she passed him, and went back to his desk as if he had already forgotten her.
Judith went home at once, and all through the morning, she saw to it that she was not very far from the telephone. Every time it rang her heart pounded a little harder, and each time that the call was not what she hoped it would be, disappointment became a little more keen, the fear of failure a little more pronounced.
The maid who served luncheon reported to the kitchen that her mistress had tasted nothing.
"What did I tell ye?" said the cook with profound mysteriousness, and even the chauffeur's boy, who could not recall that she had told anything, was silenced. "There's things goin' on in this house," she declared impressively, when she observed that the silence about her was respectful, "as how none of ye understand." There was no denial.
At about three o'clock, Judith heard the first news.
"The postmark, of course, told us the general locality," said the placid voice over the telephone, speaking very slowly and distinctly. "I have just heard from one of my operatives who has been investigating the drug-stores in the neighbourhood, that he expects to locate a doctor at any time, who will be able to supply the rest of the information we seek. It may be an hour—perhaps two—perhaps not to-day. But I think I can assure you of ultimate success."
Judith thanked him so calmly that the detective wondered. Had he seen the expression of her face as she hung up the receiver, he would have wondered still more.
But as three o'clock merged into four, and four rolled away into five, with no further report, Judith's restlessness gave place to resignation. And when, just as it was turning dark, the maid announced Imrie, she was able to welcome him as unaffectedly as if not a care clouded her sky.
It was merely a reaction, of course, quite inevitable after the strain of anxiety and suspense under which she had laboured for days: but he was not aware of that. All he knew was that Judith was again the person he had known and loved so long ago. Back upon him rushed the passion which had been quiescent before her detached indifference. As she stood before him, her eyes sparkling, her teeth gleaming, in smiles the like of which he had not seen, it seemed, since they were children together, all the hopes and dreams, so long dormant, sprang to his lips.
"Ah, Judith, girl!" he cried, as he jumped to his feet and faced her. "It's got to come out again. I can't help it—I don'twantto help it. I..."
A look of something akin to terror flashed into Judith's eyes. "Don't, Arnold—please—you mustn't..." She drew away, almost as if she feared him. The movement, slight though it was, hurt him infinitely.
"I suppose it's foolish," he said wistfully. "You made that pretty clear once. But I can't help thinking that things are different now. I'm not better than I was then—but I know myself better. I was a prig—full of pride—conceited. At least I'm not that any more. I'm only..." Suddenly he stopped and eyed her narrowly.
"Tell me, Judith," he demanded, "is it because—there's someone else?"
He was not sure whether she had shaken her head or not. It had become very dark. He waited a moment, and when she said nothing, he moved a step nearer again. They were almost touching each other, and the faint fragrance of her hair in his nostrils, the soft roundness of her shoulders, overwhelmed him. He trembled violently, and his voice shook.
"Judith..." The words came low but strongly. "I've—I love you. Do you hear—I love you. I want you—can't you see it? I've loved you ever since I knew what the word meant. I love you more now than I ever did before. I've forced myself to wait, to hope, to be patient. I thought that perhaps ... Judith, my dearest, I can't do that any longer. I can't trust myself near you any more. The strain of appearing calm and contented when I'm here leaves me wretched afterward. I've tried hard to feel it as well as seem it. But it's no use. I can't. Even my work's no help. You're between me and it all the time. I hoped it would bring me nearer to you. But something—someone—it simply can't go on. I can't stand it. Either you marry me—or we've got to separate for good. I..."
"Arnold—what nonsense!" cried Judith. "Why..." As she lifted her eyes and felt his hot gaze upon her, she caught her breath and was silent. Neither spoke for what seemed hours, the only sound the ticking of the great clock in the hall. Then, with a suddenness that stunned, Imrie's strong arms were around her.
"I guess you need to be taken, my girl!" The words seemed driven through his teeth. "I've been too ... polite. The last time I kissed you I was ashamed of myself. I think if I'd kissed you twice I'd have you now. But it's never too late..."
Imrie had a powerful frame. She was impotent to prevent the eager kisses he showered upon her.
"Too polite!" he ground from between set jaws, "Not enough—sheerman..."
And then, with the force of a blow, the gust of passion vanished, as he realised that she was not struggling. She lay in his arms, her eyes closed, as if she had swooned, but with the faintest of smiles playing around her lips. He felt suddenly sheepish and awkward. He had seized her with the force of desperation, bent upon having his will with her, whether she would or no. He had half expected her to scream or scratch, to play the primal woman to his primal man. Yet here she was, lying quiet in his arms, as if—as if ... she liked it! It was incredible. It was like stooping to pick up a great weight, only to find it tissue paper. He was thrown back upon himself, all weak and trembling and amazed and delighted ... a complex of more emotions than he could possibly enumerate. But as he strove to articulate, to say something, however banal, he became aware that Judith's eyes had opened.
It was an absurd thought, he told himself, but she seemed to be listening—and not to him. Then he became conscious of a bell ringing somewhere in the house, and suddenly Judith sprang from him like an arrow from a bow.
He sat down helplessly. All his tired brain could formulate was a question without words. His arms seemed strangely weary ... as if he had been carrying a dead weight.
In a very few minutes Judith reappeared.
"I've found it," she said, with an air of imparting information for which he had long been waiting. "I'm going over at once."
"You've found it?" he echoed stupidly. "You're going over? What? Where? I don't understand."
"Brent Good's," she said quietly, already pulling on her gloves. "He's ill."
"Oh." The words were enough to galvanise Imrie into action. He jumped to his feet, his jaw set. "I shall go with you," he said. It was not uttered as a threat, nor yet as an offer. Judith divined it for what it was—a statement of fact. But she tried to protest.
"It's not at all necessary."
"I shall go with you," he repeated, with an air of believing that no human power could possibly prevent it. And Judith, with a recollection of his recent amazing outburst of masterfulness, said no more.
He seized her hand when they were in the automobile, and she made no effort to withdraw it. But something told him that she was not even conscious that he held it. After a little, he released it. She had gone very far away from him again, he thought sadly, as he watched her staring wide-eyed out into the darkness. It seemed clear enough now where she had gone, but there was no less grief at the going, for the knowledge. The swing of Imrie's hope had reached its amplitude in those brief moments he had held her unresisting in his arms. It reached its lowest ebb on that silent ride to the home of his rival.
He noticed, as he turned also to stare out of the window, that boulevards were giving place to meaner streets. Car-tracks were more in evidence, and people, particularly children, more numerous. From the increased jolting, the change in the character of the pavements was obvious. For a little while they rolled down a very brightly lighted thoroughfare, lined with shops and moving-picture theatres, and crowded with vehicles and humanity. Then they turned into a street which was hardly lighted at all, lined with tall, narrow buildings, entered through steep, high porches. A few minutes later the car stopped.
Imrie followed Judith up the precipitous ascent to one of the tall, narrow buildings. Vaguely unpleasant odours assailed him even before the front door was opened.
"I would like to see Mr. Good," said Judith to the round-shouldered slattern who answered the bell. The latter nodded dubiously for a moment, before she disappeared down the dark and narrow hall. Imrie noticed that she limped as she walked, and that her underskirt showed on one side. From somewhere below a nauseous odour of stale cooking drifted up. It was reminiscent to him of schoolday cabbage and boiled things. He watched Judith in the huge mirror which hung to one side. It was cracked rather badly, and one of the corners of its finger-marked black frame had separated.
Presently a stout, red-faced woman with untidy hair, appeared from the passageway where the young girl had disappeared. She was using her apron to wipe alternately her hands and the perspiration which exuded copiously from her forehead. One of her eyes was slightly crossed, giving her a curious aspect, half comic, half malevolent.
"I would like to see Mr. Good, if I may," repeated Judith pleasantly, as she approached.
The stout woman raised her hand with a gesture of regret. "Pshaw now—you're too late."
"Too late?" echoed Judith, her voice trembling.
"Yiss, it's too bad, surely," said the woman calmly. "He died goin' on two days, it is."
For an instant Imrie thought that Judith was going to faint. All the colour left her face. As she stood there, trembling and swallowing hard, her pallor showing green in the dim and flickering gas-light, he thought he had never seen anything more pitiful.
"Was you a friend of his'n?" asked the stout woman, apparently rather surprised at the reception of her intelligence.
"Yes," whispered Judith, drawing the words in through compressed lips, "I was a—friend." Then she removed her hand from the newel post, which had steadied her, and drew herself erect with what seemed like a physical effort.
"I wonder if it would be possible to ... has his room—been changed? Could I ... see it?"
"Bless yer heart, child, that ye may," said the landlady sympathetically, as if she had solved the problem. Imrie hated her violently for her solution. "Jist step this way," she added soothingly.
She led the way up interminable flights of stairs, which creaked and groaned no matter how lightly they tried to walk. Finally they stopped climbing, and proceeded down a narrow hall, lighted, after a fashion, by a single gas lamp. Every now and then a draft from somewhere set it quivering gustily.
Judith was walking as if in a dream. Imrie felt certain that she saw none of the sights which he saw, nor heard the sounds, nor smelled the odours. But he was wrong. She felt them all with ten times the keenness that he did.
At length their guide halted, breathing heavily, and after fumbling with a bunch of rusty keys, swung open a door which creaked dismally. A breath of air, faintly pungent with the odour of drugs, came from the room beyond.
Judith and Imrie stood silently waiting in the hall. The only sound was a muttered imprecation from the landlady as she stumbled into something in her search for the light. When she found it, the jet was clogged, and it whistled and danced as if animate, piping a march to their entrance.
The room was incredibly small, one wall being reduced to less than the height of a man by the sharp slope of the roof: and there was only one window. It was a vivid moment, even to the stout woman, who did not understand it at all. To Imrie, who thought he understood it, but did not, the background of the play was burned into his memory never to be erased.
He was keenly cognisant of the places where the wood floor showed through the dingy carpet, and the black spots on the iron bedstead from which the paint had chipped off. He saw, too, the serrated edges of the water pitcher, and the discoloured marble top of the rickety wash basin. The poverty of the little room, intensified by its very neatness, struck him with a clarity which hurt.
But most of all, he noticed the books. They were everywhere, for the most part ancient in appearance, but with the subtle difference between the age of use and that merely of years. There was a set of shelves, with its flimsy boards bending under them. They were piled under the bed, in corners, on the mantel ... he stopped when he reached the mantel, partly from Judith's half-uttered cry, partly from what he saw.
It was a photograph, in a cheap gilt frame, of Judith herself, apparently cut from some newspaper. It was the only picture in the room. Aside from the books, it was the only thing which did not belong to the boarding-house. Imrie felt a lump rise in his throat. He heard Judith's voice faintly.
She was asking matter-of-fact questions quite calmly, but the effort it was costing her was manifest. The landlady, who was superstitious, was very glad that the silence had been broken. She talked volubly.
"Yiss, he was buried all right and reg'lar. No, there was no fun'ral. He said as how 'twas needless expense. No, there was no friends, 'cept, o' course, a few of us here-abouts. He wouldn't 'ave nobody notified. He said as how nobody cared. I think m'self 'e wandered a bit. He talked wild, it seemed to me. No, 'e didn't suffer none—not as I could see. His books? Oh, 'e sold 'em. They're comin' for 'em to-morrer. He wanted the money given to a Jew boy that's sick downstairs. He was queer, Mr. Good was, but 'e was allus free with 'is money, that 'e was."
"What about the picture?" Judith's voice was strained and hoarse.
"Oh, that? He told me to send it to some lady. Funny name, it was. I got it downstairs. I been too busy to attend to it. What with the dyin' and the buryin' an' all, not to mention the cookin'—and two parties moved out to-day, an'...."
"Was it Wynrod—the name?" asked Judith gently.
A light broke over the stout woman's face. "Sure now, that was it. But how did ye know?" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"I am Miss Wynrod."
"Oh, so that's it, is it. Well then, ye can be takin' it an' save me the trouble. An' by the way—there's a letter, too. I fergot about that. One moment an' I'll have it fer ye...."
She disappeared noisily. Judith stood staring out of the window. Imrie tried to fix his attention upon the books, but his eyes kept wandering miserably to Judith's unresponsive back, drooping like a wilted flower. Neither spoke. The stout woman returned in a surprisingly short time, considering her bulk.
"Here 'tis," she cried cheerfully, puffing like some inadequate engine. "I spilt a little cranberry on it, but that won't hurt the inside." She handed the envelope to Judith and stood waiting expectantly.
But Judith turned and accepted it without a word, her grey face as immobile as if made of stone. Quietly she moved nearer the whistling gas-light, and after a pause, as though she were girding herself for a struggle, she tore the flap quickly.
It was a short note:
"Dearest of Friends:
"This is my 'thirty.' My story's done—the candle's out.
"But after all, each one of us is only a page—perhaps only a letter—in the great Book. We're blotted out or torn away, but the Story goes on—always.
"The forms are closed on my tale. The wires are dead. But there's 'more to follow' inyourstory. And the big Yarn isn't finished because my take's all set. Even when the Foreman puts the blue envelope inyourbox, even then—there will be 'more to follow.'
"I have loved you well."
Still moving like an automaton, she folded the scrap of paper and placed it carefully in her bag. Then, as if she could not speak, she bowed to the landlady, who surveyed her in patent disappointment, and walked slowly from the room. Imrie followed, understanding something of her suffering, impotent to help.
But once in the automobile, he could stand it no longer.
"Oh, Judith, Judith," he cried brokenly, "won't you let me...." He put his arm around her and drew her to him.
She freed herself mechanically.
"No, Arnold," she said very gently. "Not—not now...."
Then the tears came.