Phoebe
Phoebe
Before the morning was half over he was playing with Phoebe and her toys quite as135childishly and gleefully as she, his heart in the fun she was having, his mind almost wholly cleared of the bitterness and rancour that so recently had filled it to overflowing.
The three of them floundered through the snowdrifts to the station, laughing and shouting with a merriment that proved infectious. The long-obscured sun came out and caught the disease, for he smiled broadly, and the wind gave over snarling and smirked with an amiability that must have surprised the shivering horses standing desolate in front of certain places wherein their owners partook of Christmas cheer that was warm.
Harvey took Phoebe and the nurse to the theatre in a cab. He went up to the box-office window and asked for the two tickets. The seller was most agreeable. He handed out the little envelope with the words:—
“A packed house to-day, Mr.—Mr.—er—ah, and—sold out for to-night. Here you are, with Miss Duluth’s compliments—the best seats in the house. And here is a note for—er—yes, for the nurse.”
Annie read the note. It was from Nellie, instructing her to bring Phoebe to her dressing-room136after the performance, where they would have supper later on.
Harvey saw them pass in to the warm theatre and then slowly wandered out to the bleak, wind-swept street. There was nothing for him to do; nowhere that he could go to seek cheerful companions. For an hour or more he wandered up and down Broadway, his shoulders hunched up, his mittened hands to his ears, water running from his nose and eyes, his face the colour of the setting sun. Half-frozen, he at last ventured into a certain café, a place where he had lunched no fewer than half-a-dozen times, and where he thought his identity might have remained with the clerk at the cigar stand.
There were men at the tables, smoking and chatting hilariously. At one of them sat three men, two of whom were actors he had met. Summoning his courage, he approached them with a well-assumed air of nonchalance.
“Merry Christmas,” was his greeting. The trio looked at him with no sign of recognition. “How are you. Mr. Brackley? How are you, Joe?”137
The two actors shook hands with him without much enthusiasm, certainly without interest.
Light dawned on one of them. “Oh,” said he, cheerlessly, “how are you? I couldn’t place you at first.” He did not offer to introduce him to the stranger, but proceeded to enlighten the other players. “It’s—oh, you know—Nellie Duluth’s husband.”
The other fellow nodded and resumed his conversation with the third man. At the same time the speaker leaned forward to devote his attention to the tale in hand, utterly ignoring the little man, who stood with his hand on the back of the vacant chair.
Harvey waited for a few moments. “What will you have to drink?” he asked, shyly dropping into the chair. They stared at him and shook their heads.
“That seat’s engaged,” said the one called “Joe,” gruffly.
Harvey got up instantly. “Oh,” he said, in a hesitating manner. They went on with their conversation as if he were not there. After a moment he moved away, his ears burning, his138soul filled with mortification and shame. In a sort of daze he approached the cigar stand and asked for a box of cigarettes.
“What kind?” demanded the clerk, laying down his newspaper.
Harvey smiled engagingly. “Oh, the kind I usually get!” he said, feeling sure that the fellow remembered him and the quality he smoked.
“What’s that?” snapped the clerk, scowling.
The purchaser hastily mentioned a certain kind of cigarette, paid for it after the box had been tossed at him, and walked away. Fixed in his determination to stay in the place until he was well thawed out, he took a seat at a little table near the stairway and ordered a hot lemonade.
He was conscious of a certain amount of attention from the tables adjacent to the trio he had accosted. Several loud guffaws came to his ears as he sipped the boiling drink. Taking an unusually copious swallow, he coughed and spluttered as the liquid scalded his tongue and palate. The tears rushed to his eyes. From past experience he knew that his tongue would139be sore for at least a week. He had such a tender tongue, Nellie said.
For half an hour he sat there dreaming and brooding. It was much better than tramping the streets. A clock on the opposite wall pointed to four o’clock. The matinée would be over at a quarter to five. Presently he looked again. It was five minutes past four. Really it wasn’t so bad waiting after all; not half so bad as he had thought it would be.
Some one tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up with a start. The manager of the place stood at his elbow.
“This isn’t a railway station, young feller,” he said, harshly. “You’ll have to move on. These tables are for customers.”
“But I’ve bought––”
“Now, don’t argue about it. You heard what I said. Move along.”
The man’s tone was peremptory. Poor Harvey looked around as if in search of a single benevolent face, and then, without a word of protest, arose and moved quickly toward the door. His eyes were fixed in a glassy stare on the dancing, elusive doorway. He wondered if he could reach it before he sank through the140floor. Somehow he had the horrible feeling that just as he opened it to go out some one would kick him from behind. He could almost feel the impact of the boot and involuntarily accelerated his speed as he opened the door to pass into the biting air of the now darkening street.
“I hate this damned town,” said he to himself over and over again as he flung himself against the gale that almost blew him off his feet. When he stopped to take his bearings, he was far above Longacre Square and still going in the wrong direction. He was befuddled. A policeman told him in hoarse, muffled tones to go back ten blocks or so if he wanted to find the theatre where Nellie Duluth was playing.
A clock in an apothecary’s shop urged him to hurry. When he came to the theatre, the newsboys were waiting for the audience to appear. He was surrounded by a mob of boys and men shouting the extras.
“Is the show out?” he asked one of them.
“No, sir!” shouted the boy, eagerly. “Shall I call up your automobile, mister!”
“No, thank you,” said Harvey through his chattering teeth. For a moment he felt distinctly141proud and important. So shrewd a judge of humanity as a New York “newsy” had taken him to be a man of parts. For awhile he had been distressed by the fear, almost the conviction, that he was regarded by all New York as a “jay.”
Belying his suddenly acquired air of importance, he hunched himself up against the side of the building, partly sheltered from the wind, and waited for the crowd to pour forth. With the appearance of the first of those home-goers he would repair to the stage door, and, once behind the scenes, was quite certain that he would receive an invitation from Nellie to join the gay little family supper party in her dressing-room.
When the time came, however, he approached the doorman with considerable trepidation. He had a presentiment that there would be “no admittance.” Sure enough, the grizzled doorman, poking his head out, gruffly informed him that no one was allowed “back” without an order from the manager. Harvey explained who he was, taking it for granted that the man did not know him with his coat-collar turned up.142
“I know you, all right,” said the man, not unkindly. “I’d like to let you in, but—you see––” He coughed and looked about rather helplessly, avoiding the pleading look in the visitor’s eyes.
“It’s all right,” Nellie’s husband assured him, but an arm barred the way.
“I’ve got strict orders not to admit you,” blurted out the doorman, hating himself.
“Not to admit me!” said Harvey, slowly.
“I’m sorry, sir. Orders is orders.”
“But my little girl is there.”
“Yes, sir, I understand. The orders are for you, sir, not for the kid.” Struck by the look in the little man’s eyes he hastened to say, “Maybe if you saw Mr. Ripton out front and sent a note in to Miss Duluth, she’d change her mind and––”
“Good Lord!” fell from Harvey’s lips as he abruptly turned away to look for a spot where he could hide himself from every one.
Two hours later, from his position at the mouth of the alley, he saw a man come out of the stage door and blow a whistle thrice. He was almost perishing with cold; he was sure that his ears were frozen. A sharp snap at the143top of each of them and a subsequent warmth urged him to press quantities of snow against them, obeying the old rule that like cures like. From the kitchens of a big restaurant came the odours of cooking foodstuffs. He was hungry on this Merry Christmas night, but he would not leave his post. He had promised to wait for Phoebe and take her out home with him in the train.
With the three blasts of the whistle he stirred his numb feet and edged nearer to the stage door. A big limousine came rumbling up the alley from behind, almost running him down. The fur-coated chauffeur called him unspeakable names as he passed him with the emergency brakes released.
Before he could reach the entrance, the door flew open and a small figure in fur coat and a well known white hat was bundled into the machine by a burly stage hand. A moment later Annie clambered in, the door was slammed and the machine started ahead.
He shouted as he ran, but his cry was not heard. As the car careened down the narrow lane, throwing snow in all directions, he dropped into a dejected, beaten walk. Slowly144he made his way in the trail of the big car—it was too dark for him to detect the colour, but he felt it was green—and came at last to the mouth of the alley, desolate, bewildered, hurt beyond all understanding.
For an instant he steadied himself against the icy wall of a building, trying to make up his mind what to do next. Suddenly it occurred to him that if he ran hard and fast he could catch the train—the seven-thirty—and secure a bit of triumph in spite of circumstances.
He went racing up the street toward Sixth Avenue, dodging head-lowered pedestrians with the skill of an Indian, and managed to reach Forty-second Street without mishap or delay. Above the library he was stopped by a policeman, into whose arms he went full tilt, almost bowling him over. The impact dazed him. He saw many stars on the officer’s breast. As he looked they dwindled into one bright and shining planet and a savage voice was bellowing:—
“Hold still or I’ll bat you over the head!”
“I’m—I’m trying to make the seven-thirty,” he panted, wincing under the grip on his arm.145
“We’ll see about that,” growled the policeman.
“For Heaven’s sake, Mr. Policeman, I haven’t done anything. Honest, I’m in a hurry. My little girl’s on that train. We live in Tarrytown. She’ll cry her eyes out if I––”
“What was you running for?”
“For it,” said Harvey, at the end of a deep breath.
“It’s only seven-five now,” said the officer, suspiciously.
“Well, it’s the seven-ten I want, then,” said Harvey, hastily.
“I guess I’ll hold you here and see if anybody comes chasin’ up after you. Not a word, now. Close your trap.”
As no one came up to accuse the prisoner of murder, theft, or intoxication, the intelligent policeman released him at the expiration of fifteen minutes. A crowd had collected despite the cold. Harvey was always to remember that crowd of curious people; he never ceased wondering where they came from and why they were content to stand there shivering in the zero weather when there were stoves and steam146radiators everywhere to be found. To add to his humiliation at least a dozen men and boys, not satisfied with the free show as far as it had gone, pursued him to the very gates in the concourse.
“Darned loafers!” said Harvey, hotly, but under his breath, as he showed his ticket and his teeth at the same time. Then he rushed for the last coach and swung on as it moved out.
Now, if I were inclined to be facetious or untruthful I might easily add to his troubles by saying that he got the wrong train, or something of the sort, but it is not my purpose to be harder on him than I have to be.
It was the right train, and, better still, Annie and Phoebe were in the very last seat of the very last coach. With a vast sigh he dropped into a vacant seat ahead of them and began fanning himself with his hat, to the utter amazement of onlookers, who had been disturbed by his turbulent entrance.
The newspaper Annie was reading fell from her hands.
“My goodness, sir! Where did you come from?” she managed to inquire.
“I’ve been—dining—at—Sherry’s,” he147wheezed. “Annie, will you look and see if my ears are frozen?”
“They are, sir. Good gracious!”
He realised that he had been indiscreet.
“I—I sat in a draught,” he hastened to explain. “Did you have a nice time, Phoebe?”
The child was sleepy. “No,” she said, almost sullenly. His heart gave a bound. “Mamma wouldn’t let me eat anything. She said I’d get fat.”
“You had quite enough to eat, Phoebe,” said Annie.
“I didn’t,” said Phoebe.
“Never mind,” said her father, “I’ll take you to Sherry’s some day.”
“When, daddy?” she cried, wide awake at once. “I like to go to places with you.”
He faltered. “Some day after mamma has gone off on the road. We’ll be terribly gay, while she’s away, see if we ain’t.”
Annie picked up the paper and handed it to him.
“Miss Duluth ain’t going on the road, sir,” she said. “It’s in the paper.”
He read the amazing news. Annie, suddenly voluble, gave it to him by word of mouth while148he read. It was all there, she said, to prove what she was telling him. “Just as if I couldn’t read!” said Harvey, as he began the article all over again after perusing the first few lines in a perfectly blank state of mind.
“Yes, sir, the doctor says she can’t stand it on the road. She’s got nervous prosperity and she’s got to have a long rest. That Miss Brown is going to take her place in the play after this week and Miss Duluth is going away out West to live for awhile to get strong again. She––What is the name of the town, Phoebe?”
“Reno,” said Phoebe, promptly.
“But the name of the town isn’t in the paper, sir,” Annie informed him. “It’s a place where people with complications go to get rid of them, Miss Nellie says. The show won’t be any good without her, sir. I wouldn’t give two cents to see it.”
He sagged down in the seat, a cold perspiration starting out all over his body.
“When does she go—out there!” he asked, as in a dream.
“First of next week. She goes to Chicago with the company and then right on out to—to—er—to––”149
“Reno,” said he, lifelessly.
“Yes, sir.”
He did not know how long afterward it was that he heard Phoebe saying to him, her tired voice barely audible above the clacking of the wheels:—
“I want a drink of water, daddy.”
His voice seemed to come back to him from some far-away place. He blinked his eyes several times and said, very wanly:—
“You mustn’t drink water, dearie. It will make you fat.”
150CHAPTER VITHE REVOLVER
He waited until the middle of the week for some sign from her; none coming, he decided to go once more to her apartment before it was too late. The many letters he wrote to her during the first days after learning of her change of plans were never sent. He destroyed them. A sense of shame, a certain element of pride, held them back. Still, he argued with no little degree of justice, there were many things to be decided before she took the long journey—and the short step she was so plainly contemplating.
It was no more than right that he should make one last and determined effort to save her from the fate she was so blindly courting. It was due her. She was his wife. He had promised to cherish and protect her. If she would not listen to the appeal, at least he would have done his bounden duty.
There was an ever present, ugly fear, too, that she meant, by some hook or crook, to rob him of Phoebe.151
“And she’s as much mine as hers,” he declared to himself a thousand times or more.
Behind everything, yet in plain view, lay his own estimate of himself—the naked truth—he was “no good!” He had come to the point of believing it of himself. He was not a success; he was quite the other thing. But, granting that, he was young and entitled to another chance. He could work into a partnership with Mr. Davis if given the time.
Letting the midweek matinée slip by, he made the plunge on a Thursday. She was to leave New York on Sunday morning; that much he knew from the daily newspapers, which teemed with Nellie’s breakdown and its lamentable consequences. It would be at least a year, the papers said, before she could resume her career on the stage. He searched the columns daily for his own name, always expecting to see himself in type little less conspicuous than that accorded to her, and stigmatised as a brute, an inebriate, a loafer. It was all the same to him—brute, soak, or loafer. But even under these extraordinary conditions he was as completely blanketed by obscurity as if he never had been in existence.152
Sometimes he wondered whether she could get a divorce without according him a name. He had read of fellow creatures meeting death “at the hand of a person (or of persons) unknown.” Could a divorce complaint be worded in such non-committal terms? Then there was that time-honoured shroud of private identity, the multitudinous John Doe. Could she have the heart to bring proceedings against him as John Doe? He wondered.
If he were to shoot himself, so that she might have her freedom without going to all the trouble of a divorce or the annoyance of a term of residence in Reno, would she put his name on a tombstone? He wondered.
A strange, a most unusual thing happened to him just before he left the house to go to the depot. He was never quite able to account for the impulse which sent him upstairs rather obliquely to search through a trunk for a revolver, purchased a couple of years before, following the report that housebreakers were abroad in Tarrytown, and which he had promptly locked away in his trunk for fear that Phoebe might get hold of it.
He rummaged about in the trunk, finally unearthing153the weapon. He slipped it into his overcoat pocket with a furtive glance over his shoulder. He chuckled as he went down the stairs. It was a funny thing for him to do, locking the revolver in the trunk that way. What burglar so obliging as to tarry while he went through all the preliminaries incident to destruction under the circumstances? Yes, it was stupid of him.
He did not consider the prospect of being arrested for carrying concealed weapons until he was halfway to the city, and then he broke into a mild perspiration. From that moment he eyed every man with suspicion. He had heard of “plain clothes men.” They were the very worst kind. “They take you unawares so,” said he to himself, with which he moved closer to the wall of the car, the more effectually to conceal the weapon. It wouldn’t do to be caught going about with a revolver in one’s pocket. That would be the very worst thing that could happen. It would mean “the Island” or some other such place, for he could not have paid a fine.
It occurred to him, therefore, that it would be wiser to get down at One Hundred and Tenth154street and walk over to Nellie’s. The policemen were not so thick nor so bothersome up there, he figured, and it was a rather expensive article he was carrying; one never got them back from the police, even if the fine were paid.
Footsore, weary, and chilled to the bone, he at length came to the apartment building wherein dwelt Nellie Duluth. In these last few weeks he had developed a habit of thinking of her as Nellie Duluth, a person quite separate and detached from himself. He had come to regard himself as so far removed from Nellie Duluth that it was quite impossible for him to think of her as Mrs.—Mrs.—he had to rack his brain for the name, the connection was so remote.
He had walked miles—many devious and lengthening miles—before finally coming to the end of his journey. Once he came near asking a policeman to direct him to Eighty-ninth Street, but the sudden recollection of the thing he carried stopped him in time. That and the discovery of a sign on a post which frostily informed him that he was then in the very street he sought.
It should go without the saying that he hesitated155a long time before entering the building. Perhaps it would be better after all to write to her. Somewhat sensibly he argued that a letter would reach her, while it was more than likely he would fall short of a similar achievement. She couldn’t deny Uncle Sam, but she could slam the door in her husband’s face. Yes, he concluded, a letter was the thing. Having come to this half-hearted decision, he proceeded to argue himself out of it. Suppose that she received the letter, did it follow that she would reply to it? He might enclose a stamp and all that sort of thing, but he knew Nellie; she wouldn’t answer a letter—at least, not that kind of letter. She would laugh at it, and perhaps show it to her friends, who also would be vastly amused. He remembered some of them as he saw them in the café that day; they were given to uproarious laughter. No, he concluded, a letter was not the thing. He must see her. He must have it out with her, face to face.
So he went up in the elevator to the eleventh floor, which was the top one, got out and walked down to the sixth, where she lived. Her name was on the door plate. He read it three or four times before resolutely pressing the electric156button. Then he looked over his shoulder quickly, impelled by the queer feeling that some one was behind him, towering like a dark, threatening shadow. A rough hand seemed ready to close upon his shoulder to drag him back and down. But no one was there. He was alone in the little hall. And yet something was there. He could feel it, though he could not see it; something sinister that caused him to shiver. His tense fingers relaxed their grip on the revolver. Strangely the vague thing that disturbed him departed in a flash and he felt himself alone once more. It was very odd, thought he.
Rachel came to the door. She started back in surprise, aye, alarm, when she saw the little man in the big ulster. A look of consternation sprang into her black eyes.
He opened his lips to put the natural question, but paused with the words unuttered. The sound of voices in revelry came to his ears from the interior of the apartment, remote but very insistent. Men’s voices and women’s voices raised in merriment. His gaze swept the exposed portion of the hall. Packing boxes stood against the wall, piled high. The odour157of camphor came out and smote his sense of smell.
Rachel was speaking. Her voice was peculiarly hushed and the words came quickly, jerkily from her lips.
“Miss Duluth is engaged, sir. I’m sorry she will not be able to see you.”
He stared uncertainly at her and beyond her.
“So she’s packing her things,” he murmured, more to himself than to the servant. Rachel was silent. He saw the door closing in his face. A curious sense of power, of authority, came over him. “Hold on,” he said sharply, putting his foot against the door. “You go and tell her I want to see her. It’s important—very important!”
“She has given orders, sir, not to let you––”
“Well, I’m giving a few orders myself, and I won’t stand for any back talk, do you hear? Who is the master of this place, tell me that?” He thumped his breast with his knuckles. “Step lively, now. Tell her I’m here.”
He pushed his way past her and walked into what he called the “parlour,” but what was to Nellie the “living-room.” Here he found158numerous boxes, crates, and parcels, all prepared for shipment or storage. Quite coolly he examined the tag on a large crate. The word “Reno” smote him. As he cringed he smiled a sickly smile without being conscious of the act. “Wait a minute,” he called to Rachel, who was edging in an affrighted manner toward the lower end of the hall and the dining-room. “What is she doing?”
Rachel’s face brightened. He was going to be amenable to reason.
“It’s a farewell luncheon, sir. She simply can’t be disturbed. I’ll tell her you were here.”
“You don’t need to tell her anything,” said he, briskly. The sight of those crates and boxes had made another man of him. “I’ll announce myself. She won’t––”
“You’d better not!” cried Rachel, distractedly. “There are some men here. They will throw you out of the apartment. They’re big enough, Mr.—Mr.––”
He grinned. His fingers took a new grip on the revolver.
“Napoleon wasn’t as big as I am,” he said, much to Rachel’s distress. It sounded very mad to her. “Size isn’t everything.”159
“For Heaven’s sake, sir, please don’t––”
“They seem to be having a gay old time,” said he, as a particularly wild burst of laughter came from the dining-room. He hesitated. “Who is out there?”
Rachel was cunning. “I don’t know the names, sir. They’re—they’re strangers to me.”
At that instant the voice of Fairfax came to his ears, loudly proclaiming a health to the invalid who was going to Reno. Harvey stood there in the hall, listening to the toast. He heard it to the end, and the applause that followed. If he were to accept the diagnosis of the speaker, Nellie was repairing to Reno to be cured of an affliction that had its inception seven years before, a common malady, but not fatal if taken in time. The germ, or, more properly speaking, the parasite, unlike most bacteria, possessed but two legs, and so on and so forth.
The laughter was just dying away when Harvey—who recognised himself as the pestiferous germ alluded to—strode into the room, followed by the white-faced Rachel.
“Who was it, Rachel?” called out Nellie,160from behind the enormous centrepiece of roses which obstructed her view of the unwelcome visitor.
The little man in the ulster piped up, shrilly:—
“She don’t know my name, but I guess you do, if you’ll think real hard.”
There were ten at the table, flushed with wine and the exertion of hilarity. Twenty eyes were focussed on the queer, insignificant little man in the doorway. If they had not been capable of focussing them on anything a moment before, they acquired the power to do so now.
Nellie, staring blankly, arose. She wet her lips twice before speaking.
“Who let you in here?” she cried, shrilly.
One of the men pushed back his chair and came to his feet a bit unsteadily.
“What the deuce is it, Nellie?” he hiccoughed.
Nellie had her wits about her. She was very pale, but she was calm. Instinctively she felt that trouble—even tragedy—was confronting her; the thing she had feared all along without admitting it even to herself.
“Sit down, Dick,” she commanded. “Don’t161get excited, any of you. It’s all right. My husband, that’s all.”
The man at her right was Fairfax. He was gaping at Harvey with horror in his face. He, too, had been expecting something like this. Involuntarily he shifted his body so that the woman on the other side, a huge creature, was partially between him and the little man in the door.
“Get him out of here!” he exclaimed. “He’s just damned fool enough to do something desperate if we––”
“You shut up!” barked Harvey, in a sudden access of fury. “Not a word out of you, you big bully.”
“Get him out!” gasped Fairfax, holding his arm over his face. “What did I tell you? He’s crazy! Grab him, Smith! Hurry up!”
“Grab him yourself!” retorted Smith, in some haste. “He’s not gunning for me.”
What there was to be afraid of in the appearance of the little ulstered man who stood there with his hands in his pockets I cannot for the life of me tell, but there was no doubt as to the consternation he produced in the midst of this erstwhile jovial crowd. An abrupt demand of162courtesy urged him to raise his hand to doff his hat in the presence of ladies. Twenty terrified eyes watched the movement as if ten lives hung on the result thereof. Half of the guests were standing, the other half too petrified to move. A husband is a thing to strike terror to the heart, believe me, no matter how trivial he may be, especially an unexpected husband.
“Go away, Harvey!” cried Nellie, placing Fairfax between herself and the intruder.
“Don’t do that!” growled the big man, sharply. “Do you suppose I want him shooting holes through me in order to get at you?”
“Is he going to shoot?” wailed one of the women, dropping the wineglass she had been holding poised near her lips all this time. The tinkle of broken glass and the douche of champagne passed unnoticed. “For God’s sake, let me get out of here!”
“Keep your seats, ladies and gents,” said Harvey, hastily, beginning to show signs of confusion. “I just dropped in to see Nellie for a few minutes. Don’t let me disturb you. She can step into the parlour, I guess. They’ll excuse you, Nellie.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” snapped Nellie,163noting the change in him. “Go away or I’ll have a policeman called.”
He grinned. “Well, if you do, he’ll catch me with the goods,” he said, mysteriously.
“The goods?” repeated Nellie.
“Do you want to see it?” he asked, fixing her with his eyes. As he started to withdraw his hand from his overcoat pocket, a general cry of alarm went up and there was a sudden shifting of positions.
“Don’t do that!” roared two or three of the men in a breath.
“Keep that thing in your pocket!” commanded Fairfax, huskily, without removing his gaze from the arm that controlled the hidden hand.
Harvey gloated. He waved the hand that held his hat. “Don’t be alarmed, ladies,” he said. “You are quite safe. I can hit a silver dollar at twenty paces, so there’s no chance of anything going wild.”
“For God’s sake!” gasped Fairfax. Suddenly he disappeared beneath the edge of the table. His knees struck the floor with a resounding thump.
“Get away from me!” shrieked the corpulent164lady, kicking at him as she fled the danger spot.
Harvey stooped and peered under the table at his enemy, a broad grin on his face. Fairfax took it for a grin of malevolence.
“Peek-a-boo!” called Harvey.
“Don’t shoot! For the love of Heaven, don’t shoot!” yelled Fairfax. Then to the men who were edging away in quest of safety behind the sideboard, china closet, and serving table:—“Why don’t you grab him, you idiots?”
Harvey suddenly realised the danger of his position. He straightened up and jerked the revolver from his pocket, brandishing it in full view of them all.
“Keep back!” he shouted—a most unnecessary command.
Those who could not crowd behind the sideboard made a rush for the butler’s pantry. Feminine shrieks and masculine howls filled the air. Chairs were overturned in the wild rush for safety. No less than three well-dressed women were crawling on their hands and knees toward the only means of exit from the room.
“Telephone for the police!” yelled Fairfax,165backing away on all-fours, suggesting a crawfish.
“Stay where you are!” cried Harvey, now thoroughly alarmed by the turn of affairs.
They stopped as if petrified. The three men who were wedged in the pantry door gave over struggling for the right of precedence and turned to face the peril.
Once more he brandished the weapon, and once more there were shrieks and groans, this time in a higher key.
Nellie alone stood her ground. She was desperate. Death was staring her in the face, and she was staring back as if fascinated.
“Harvey! Harvey!” she cried, through bloodless lips. “Don’t do it! Think of Phoebe! Think of your child!”
Rachel was stealing down the hall. The little Napoleon suddenly realised her purpose and thwarted it.
“Come back here!” he shouted. The trembling maid could not obey for a very excellent reason. She dropped to the floor as if shot, and, failing in the effort to crawl under a low hall-seat, remained there, prostrate and motionless.166
He then addressed himself to Nellie, first cocking the pistol in a most cold-blooded manner. Paying no heed to the commands and exhortations of the men, or the whines of the women, he announced:—
“That’s just what I’ve come here to ask you to do, Nellie; think of Phoebe. Will you promise me to––”
“I’ll promise nothing!” cried Nellie, exasperated. She was beginning to feel ridiculous, which was much worse than feeling terrified. “You can’t bluff me, Harvey, not for a minute.”
“I’m not trying to bluff you,” he protested. “I’m simply asking you to think. You can think, can’t you? If you can’t think here with all this noise going on, come into the parlour. We can talk it all over quietly and—why, great Scott, I don’t want to kill anybody!” Noting an abrupt change in the attitude of the men, who found some encouragement in his manner, he added hastily, “Unless I have to, of course. Here, you! Don’t get up!” The command was addressed to Fairfax. “I’d kind of like to take a shot at you, just for fun.”
“Harvey,” said his wife, quite calmly, “if167you don’t put that thing in your pocket and go away I will have you locked up as sure as I’m standing here.”
“I ask you once more to come into the parlour and talk it over with me,” said he, wavering.
“And I refuse,” she cried, furiously.
“Go and have it out with him, Nellie,” groaned Fairfax, lifting his head above the edge of the table, only to lower it instantly as Harvey’s hand wabbled unsteadily in a sort of attempt to draw a bead on him.
“Well, why don’t you shoot?” demanded Nellie, curtly.
“No! No!” roared Fairfax.
“No! No!” shrieked the women.
“For two cents I would,” stammered Harvey, quite carried away by the renewed turmoil.
“You would do anything for two cents,” said Nellie, sarcastically.
“I’d shoot myself for two cents,” he wailed, dismally. “I’m no use, anyway. I’d be better off dead.”
“For God’s sake let him do it, Nellie,” hissed Fairfax. “That’s the thing; the very thing.”168
Poor Harvey suddenly came to a full realisation of the position he was in. He had not counted on all this. Now he was in for it, and there was no way out of it. A vast sense of shame and humiliation mastered him. Everything before him turned gray and bleak, and then a hideous red.
He had not meant to do a single thing he had already done. Events had shaped themselves for him. He was surprised, dumfounded, overwhelmed. The only thought that now ran through his addled brain was that he simply had to do something. He couldn’t stand there forever, like a fool, waving a pistol. In a minute or two they would all be laughing at him. It was ghastly. The wave of self-pity, of self-commiseration submerged him completely. Why, oh why, had he got himself into this dreadful pickle? He had merely come to talk it over with Nellie, that and nothing more. And now, see what he was in for!
“By jingo,” he gasped, in the depth of despair, “I’ll do it! I’ll make you sorry, Nellie; you’ll be sorry when you see me lying here all shot to pieces. I’ve been a good husband to you. I don’t deserve to die like this, but––”169His watery blue eyes took in the horrified expressions on the faces of his hearers. An innate sense of delicacy arose within him. “I’ll do it in the hall.”
“Be careful of the rug,” cried Nellie, gayly, not for an instant believing that he would carry out the threat.
“Shall I do it here?” he asked, feebly.
“No!” shrieked the women, putting their fingers in their ears.
“By all means!” cried Fairfax, with a loud laugh of positive relief.
To his own as well as to their amazement, Harvey turned the muzzle of the pistol toward his face. It wabbled aimlessly. Even at such short range he had the feeling that he would miss altogether and looked over his shoulder to see if there was a picture or anything else on the wall that might be damaged by the stray bullet. Then he inserted the muzzle in his mouth.
Stupefaction held his audience. Not a hand was lifted, not a breath was drawn. For half a second his finger clung to the trigger without pressing it. Then he lowered the weapon.
“I guess I better go out in the hall, where170the elevator is,” he said. “Don’t follow me. Stay where you are. You needn’t worry.”
“I’ll bet you ten dollars you don’t do it,” said Fairfax, loudly, as he came to his feet.
“I don’t want your dirty money, blast you,” exclaimed Harvey, without thinking. “Good-by, Nellie. Be good to Phoebe. Tell ’em out in Blakeville that I—oh, tell ’em anything you like. I don’t give a rap!”
He turned and went shambling down the hall, his back very stiff, his ears very red.
It was necessary to step over Rachel’s prostrate form. He got one foot across, when she, crazed with fear, emitted a piercing shriek and arose so abruptly that he was caught unawares. What with the start the shriek gave him and the uprising of a supposedly inanimate mass, his personal equilibrium was put to the severest test. Indeed, he quite lost it, going first into the air with all the sprawl of a bronco buster, and then landing solidly on his left ear where there wasn’t a shred of rug to ease the impact. In a twinkling, however, he was on his feet, apologising to Rachel. But she was crawling away as fast as her hands and knees would carry her. From the dining-room came violent171shouts, the hated word “police” dominating the clamour.
He slid through the door and closed it after him. A moment later he was plunging down the steps, disdaining the elevator, which, however fast it may have been, could not have been swift enough for him in his present mood. The police! They would be clanging up to the building in a jiffy, and then what? To the station house!
Half-way down he paused to reflect. Voices above came howling down the shaft, urging the elevator man to stop him, to hold him, to do all manner of things to him. He felt himself trapped.
So he sat down on an upper step, leaned back against the marble wall, closed his eyes tightly, and jammed the muzzle of the revolver against the pit of his stomach.
“I hate to do it,” he groaned, and then pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell with a sharp click. He opened his eyes. If it didn’t hurt any more than that he could do it with them open. Why not? In a frenzy to have it over with he pulled again and was gratified to find that the second172bullet was not a whit more painful than the first. Then he thought of the ugly spectacle he would present if he confined the mutilation to the abdominal region. People would shudder and say, “how horrible he looks!” So he considerately aimed the third one at his right eye.
Even as he pulled the trigger, and the hammer fell with the usual click, his vision centred on the black little hole in the end of the barrel. Breathlessly he waited for the bullet to emerge. Then, all of a sudden, he recalled that there had been no explosion. The fact had escaped him during the throes of a far from disagreeable death. He put his hand to his stomach. In a dumb sort of wonder he first examined his fingers, and, finding no gore, proceeded to a rather careful inspection of the weapon.
Then he leaned back and dizzily tried to remember when he had taken the cartridges out of the thing.
“Thank the Lord,” he said, quite devoutly. “I thought I was a goner, sure. Now, when did I take ’em out?”
The elevator shot past him, going upward. He paid no attention to it.
It all came back to him in a flash. He remembered173that he had never loaded it at all. A loaded pistol is a very dangerous thing to have about the house. The little box of cartridges that came with the weapon was safely locked away at the bottom of the trunk, wrapped in a thick suit of underwear for protection against concussion.
Even as he congratulated himself on his remarkable foresight the elevator, filled with excited men, rushed past him on the way down. He heard them saying that a dangerous lunatic was at large and that he ought to be––But he couldn’t hear the rest of it, the car being so far below him.
“By jingo!” he exclaimed, leaping to his feet in consternation. “They’ll get me now. What a blamed fool I was!”
Scared out of his wits, he dashed up the steps, three at a jump, and, before he knew it, ran plump into the midst of the women who were huddled at Nellie’s landing, waiting for the shots and the death yells from below. They scattered like sheep, too frightened to scream, and he plunged through the open door into the apartment.
“Where are you, Nellie?” he bawled.174“Hide me! Don’t let ’em get me. Nellie! Oh, Nellie!”
The shout would have raised the dead. Nellie was at the telephone. She dropped the receiver and came toward him.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself!” she squealed, clutching his arm. “What an awful spectacle you’ve made of yourself—and me! You blithering little idiot. I––”
“Where can I hide?” he whispered, hopping up and down in his eagerness. “Hurry up! Under a bed or—anywhere. Good gracious, Nellie, they’ll get me sure!”
She slammed the door.
“I ought to let them take you and lock you up,” she said, facing him. The abject terror in his eyes went straight to her heart. “Oh, you poor thing!” she cried, in swift compassion. “You—you wouldn’t hurt a fly. You couldn’t. Come along! Quick! I’ll do this much for you, just this once. Never again! You can get down the back steps into the alley if you hurry. Then beat it for home. And never let me see your face again.”
Three minutes later he was scuttling down175the alley as fast as his eager legs could carry him.
Nellie was holding the front door against the thunderous assault of a half dozen men, giving him time to escape. All the while she was thinking of the depositions she could take from the witnesses to his deliberate attempt to kill her. He had made it very easy for her.