I was roused by someone walking across the roof, the cracking of tin under feet, and a comfortable and companionable odor of tobacco. I moved a very little, and then I saw that it was a man—the height and erectness told me which man. And just at that instant he saw me.
“Good Lord!” he ejaculated, and throwing his cigar away he came across quickly. “Why, Mrs. Wilson, what in the world are you doing here? I thought—they said—”
“That I was sulking again?” I finished disagreeably. “Perhaps I am. In fact, I’m quite sure of it.”
“You are not,” he said severely. “You have been asleep in a February night, in the open air, with less clothing on than I wear in the tropics.”
I had got up by this time, refusing his help, and because my feet were numb, I sat down on the parapet for a moment. Oh, I knew what I looked like—one of those “Valley-of-the-Nile-After-a-Flood” pictures.
“There is one thing about you that is comforting,” I sniffed. “You said precisely the same thing to me at three o’clock this morning. You never startle me by saying anything unexpected.”
He took a step toward me, and even in the dusk I could see that he was looking down at me oddly. All my bravado faded away and there was a queerish ringing in my ears.
“I would like to!” he said tensely. “I would like, this minute—I’m a fool, Mrs. Wilson,” he finished miserably. “I ought to be drawn and quartered, but when I see you like this I—I get crazy. If you say the word, I’ll—I’ll go down and—” He clenched his fist.
It was reprehensible, of course; he saw that in an instant, for he shut his teeth over something that sounded very fierce, and strode away from me, to stand looking out over the river, with his hands thrust in his pockets. Of course the thing I should have done was to ignore what he had said altogether, but he was so uncomfortable, so chastened, that, feline, feminine, whatever the instinct is, I could not let him go. I had been so wretched myself.
“What is it you would like to say?” I called over to him. He did not speak. “Would you tell me that I am a silly child for pouting?” No reply; he struck a match. “Or would you preach a nice little sermon about people—about women—loving their husbands?”
He grunted savagely under his breath.
“Be quite honest,” I pursued relentlessly. “Say that we are a lot of barbarians, say that because my—because Jimmy treats me outrageously—oh, he does; any one can see that—and because I loathe him—and any one can tell that—why don’t you say you are shocked to the depths?” I was a little shocked myself by that time, but I couldn’t stop, having started.
He came over to me, white-faced and towering, and he had the audacity to grip my arm and stand me on my feet, like a bad child—which I was, I dare say.
“Don’t!” he said in a husky, very pained voice. “You are only talking; you don’t mean it. It isn’t YOU. You know you care, or else why are you crying up here? And don’t do it again, DON’T DO IT AGAIN—or I will—”
“You will—what?”
“Make a fool of myself, as I have now,” he finished grimly. And then he stalked away and left me there alone, completely bewildered, to find my way down in the dark.
I groped along, holding to the rail, for the staircase to the roof was very steep, and I went slowly. Half-way down the stairs there was a tiny landing, and I stopped. I could have sworn I heard Mr. Harbison’s footsteps far below, growing fainter. I even smiled a little, there in the dark, although I had been rather profoundly shaken. The next instant I knew I had been wrong; some one was on the landing with me. I could hear short, sharp breathing, and then—
I am not sure that I struggled; in fact, I don’t believe I did—I was too limp with amazement. The creature, to have lain in wait for me like that! And he was brutally strong; he caught me to him fiercely, and held me there, close, and he kissed me—not once or twice, but half a dozen times, long kisses that filled me with hot shame for him, for myself, that I had—liked him. The roughness of his coat bruised my cheek; I loathed him. And then someone came whistling along the hall below, and he pushed me from him and stood listening, breathing in long, gasping breaths.
I ran; when my shaky knees would hold me, I ran. I wanted to hide my hot face, my disgust, my disillusion; I wanted to put my head in mother’s lap and cry; I wanted to die, or be ill, so I need never see him again. Perversely enough, I did none of those things. With my face still flaming, with burning eyes and hands that shook, I made a belated evening toilet and went slowly, haughtily, down the stairs. My hands were like ice, but I was consumed with rage. Oh, I would show him—that this was New York, not Iquique; that the roof was not his Andean tableland.
Every one elaborately ignored my absence from dinner. The Dallas Browns, Max and Lollie were at bridge; Jim was alone in the den, walking the floor and biting at an unlighted cigar; Betty had returned to Aunt Selina and was hysterical, they said, and Flannigan was in deep dejection because I had missed my dinner.
“Betty is making no end of a row,” Max said, looking up from his game, “because the old lady upstairs insists on chloroform liniment. Betty says the smell makes her ill.”
“And she can inhale Russian cigarettes,” Anne said enviously, “and gasolene fumes, without turning a hair. I call a revoke, Dal; you trumped spades on the second round.”
Dal flung over three tricks with very bad grace, and Anne counted them with maddening deliberation.
“Game and rubber,” she said. “Watch Dal, Max; he will cheat in the score if he can. Kit, don’t have another clam while I am in this house. I have eaten so many lately my waist rises and falls with the tide.”
“You have a stunning color, Kit,” Lollie said. “You are really quite superb. Who made that gown?”
“Where have you been hiding, du kleine?” Max whispered, under cover of showing me the evening paper, with a photograph of the house and a cross at the cellar window where we had tried to escape. “If one day in the house with you, Kit, puts me in this condition, what will a month do?”
From beyond the curtain of a sort of alcove, lighted with a red-shaded lamp, came a hum of conversation, Bella’s cool, even tones, and a heavy masculine voice. They were laughing; I could feel my chin go up. He was not even hiding his shame.
“Max,” I asked, while the others clamored for him and the game, “has any one been up through the house since dinner? Any of the men?”
He looked at me curiously.
“Only Harbison,” he replied promptly. “Jim has been eating his heart out in the den every since dinner; Dal played the Sonata Appasionata backward on the pianola—he wanted to put through one of Anne’s lingerie waists, on a wager that it would play a tune; I played craps with Lollie, and Flannigan has been washing dishes. Why?”
Well, that was conclusive, anyhow. I had had a faint hope that it might have been a joke, although it had borne all the evidences of sincerity, certainly. But it was past doubting now; he had lain in wait for me at the landing, and had kissed me, ME, when he thought I was Jimmy’s wife. Oh, I must have been very light, very contemptible, if that was what he thought of me!
I went into the library and got a book, but it was impossible to read, with Jimmy lying on the couch giving vent to something between a sigh and a groan every few minutes. About eleven the cards stopped, and Bella said she would read palms. She began with Mr. Harbison, because she declared he had a wonderful hand, full of possibilities; she said he should have been a great inventor or a playwright, and that his attitude to women was one of homage, respect, almost reverence. He had the courage to look at me, and if a glance could have killed he would have withered away.
When Jimmy proffered his hand, she looked at it icily. Of course she could not refuse, with Mr. Harbison looking on.
“Rather negative,” she said coldly. “The lines are obscured by cushions of flesh; no heart line at all, mentality small, self-indulgence and irritability very marked.”
Jim held his palm up to the light and stared at it.
“Gad!” he said. “Hardly safe for me to go around without gloves, is it?”
It was all well enough for Jim to laugh, but he was horribly hurt. He stood around for a few minutes, talking to Anne, but as soon as he could he slid away and went to bed. He looked very badly the next morning, as though he had not slept, and his clothes quite hung on him. He was actually thinner. But that is ahead of the story.
Max came to me while the others were sitting around drinking nightcaps, and asked me in a low tone if he could see me in the den; he wanted to ask me something. Dal overheard.
“Ask her here,” he said. “We all know what it is, Max. Go ahead and we’ll coach you.”
“Will you coach ME?” I asked, for Mr. Harbison was listening.
“The woman does not need it,” Dal retorted. And then, because Max looked angry enough really to propose to me right there, I got up hastily and went into the den. Max followed, and closing the door, stood with his back against it.
“Contrary to the general belief, Kit,” he began, “I did NOT intend to ask you to marry me.”
I breathed easier. He took a couple of steps toward me and stood with his arms folded, looking down at me. “I’m not at all sure, in fact, that I shall ever propose to you,” he went on unpleasantly.
“You have already done it twice. You are not going to take those back, are you, Max?” I asked, looking up at him.
But Max was not to be cajoled. He came close and stood with his hand on the back of my chair. “What happened on the roof tonight?” He demanded hoarsely.
“I do not think it would interest you,” I retorted, coloring in spite of myself.
“Not interest me! I am shut in this blasted house; I have to see the only woman I ever loved—REALLY loved,” he supplemented, as he caught my eye, “pretend she is another man’s wife. Then I sit back and watch her using every art—all her beauty—to make still another man love her, a man who thinks she is a married woman. If Harbison were worth the trouble, I would tell him the whole story, Aunt Selina be—obliterated!”
I sat up suddenly.
“If Harbison were worth the trouble!” I repeated. What did he mean? Had he seen—
“I mean just this,” Max said slowly. “There is only one unaccredited member of this household; only one person, save Flannigan, who was locked in the furnace room, one person who was awake and around the house when Anne’s jewels went, only one person in the house, also, who would have any motive for the theft.”
“Motive?” I asked dully.
“Poverty,” Max threw at me. “Oh, I mean comparative poverty, of course. Who is this fellow, anyhow? Dal knew him at school, traveled with him through India. On the strength of that he brings him here, quarters him with decent people, and wonders when they are systematically robbed!”
“You are unjust!” I said, rising and facing him. “I do not like Mr. Harbison—I—I hate him, if you want to know. But as to his being a thief, I—think it is quite as likely that you took the necklace.”
Max threw his cigarette into the fire angrily.
“So that is how it is!” he mocked. “If either of us is the thief, it is I! You DO hate him, don’t you?”
I left him there, flushed with irritation, and joined the others. Just as I entered the room, Betty burst through the hall door like a cyclone, and collapsed into a chair. “She’s a mean, cantankerous old woman!” she declared, feeling for her handkerchief. “You can take care of your own Aunt Selina, Jim Wilson. I will never go near her again.”
“What did you do? Poison her?” Dallas asked with interest.
“G—got camphor in her eyes,” snuffed Betty. “You never—heard such a noise. I wouldn’t be a trained nurse for anything in the world. She—she called me a hussy!”
“You’re not going to give her up, are you, Betty?” Jim asked imploringly. But Betty was, and said so plainly.
“Anyhow, she won’t have me back,” she finished, “and she has sent for—guess!”
“Have mercy!” Dal cried, dropping to his knees. “Oh, fair ministering angel, she has not sent for me!”
“No,” Betty said maliciously. “She wants Bella—she’s crazy about her.”
Really, I have left Aunt Selina rather out of it, but she was important as a cause, not as a result; at least at first. She came out strong later. I believe she was a very nice old woman, with strong likes and prejudices, which she was perfectly willing to pay for. At least, I only presume she had likes; I know she had prejudices.
Nobody every understood why Bella consented to take Betty’s place with Aunt Selina. As for me, I was too much engrossed with my own affairs to pay the invalid much attention. Once or twice during the day I had stopped in to see her, and had been received frigidly and with marked disapproval. I was in disgrace, of course, after the scene in the dining room the night before. I had stood like a naughty child, just inside the door, and replied meekly when she said the pillows were overstuffed, and why didn’t I have the linen slips rinsed in starch water? She laid the blame of her illness on me, as I have said before, and she made Jim read to her in the afternoon from a book she carried with her, Coals of Fire on the DOMESTIC Hearth, marking places for me to read.
She sent for me that night, just as I had taken off my gown; so I threw on a dressing gown and went in. To my horror, Jim was already there. At a gesture from Aunt Selina, he closed the door into the hall and tiptoed back beside the bed, where he sat staring at the figures on the silk comfort.
Aunt Selina’s first words were:
“Where’s that flibberty-gibbet?”
Jim looked at me.
“She must mean Betty,” I explained. “She has gone to bed, I think.”
“Don’t—let—her—in—this—room—again,” she said, with awful emphasis. “She is an infamous creature.”
“Oh, come now, Aunt Selina,” Jim broke in; “she’s foolish, perhaps, but she’s a nice little thing.”
Aunt Selina’s face was a curious study. Then she raised herself on her elbow, and, taking a flat chamois-skin bag from under her pillow, held it out.
“My cameo breastpin,” she said solemnly; “my cuff-buttons with gold rims and storks painted on china in the middle; my watch, that has put me to bed and got me up for forty years, and my money—five hundred and ten dollars and forty cents!—taken with the doors locked under my nose.” Which was ambiguous, but forcible.
“But, good gracious, Miss Car—Aunt Selina!” I exclaimed, “you don’t think Betty Mercer took those things?”
“No,” she said grimly; “I think I probably got up in my sleep and lighted the fire with them, or sent em out for a walk.” Then she stuffed the bag away and sat up resolutely in bed.
“Have you made up?” she demanded, looking from one to the other of us. “Bella, don’t tell me you still persist in that nonsense.”
“What nonsense?” I asked, getting ready to run.
“That you do not love him.”
“Him?”
“James,” she snapped irritably. “Do you suppose I mean the policeman?”
I looked over at Jimmy. She had got me by the hand, and Jimmy was making frantic gestures to tell her the whole thing and be done with it. But I had gone too far. The mill of the gods had crushed me already, and I didn’t propose to be drawn out hideously mangled and held up as an example for the next two or three weeks, although it was clear enough that Aunt Selina disapproved of me thoroughly, and would have been glad enough to find that no tie save the board of health held us together. And then Bella came in, and you wouldn’t have known her. She had put on a straight white woolen wrapper, and she had her hair in two long braids down her back. She looked like a nice, wide-eyed little girl in her teens, and she had some lobster salad and a glass of port on a tray. When she saw the situation, she put the things down and had the nastiness to stay and listen.
“I’m not blind,” Aunt Selina said, with one eye on the tray. “You two silly children adore each other; I saw some things last night.”
Bella took a step forward; then she stopped and shrugged her shoulders. Jim was purple.
“I saw you kiss her in the dining room, remember that!” Aunt Selina went on, giving the screw another turn.
It was Bella’s turn to be excited. She gave me one awful stare, then she fixed her eyes on Jim.
“Besides,” Aunt Selina went on, “you told me today that you loved her. Don’t deny it, James.”
Bella couldn’t keep quiet another instant. She came over and stood at the foot of the bed.
“Please don’t excite yourself, DEAR Miss Caruthers,” she said in a voice like ice. “Every one knows that he loves her; he simply overflows with it. It—it is quite a by-word among their friends. They have been sitting together in a corner all evening.”
Yes, that was what she said; when I had not spoken to Jimmy the whole time in the den. Bella was cattish, and she was jealous, too. I turned on my heel and went to the door; then I turned to her, with my hand on the knob.
“You have been misinformed,” I said coldly. “You can not possibly know, having spent three hours in a corner yourself—with Mr. Harbison.” I abhor jealousy in a woman.
Well, Aunt Selina ate all the lobster salad, and drank the port after Bella had told her it was beef, iron and wine, and she slept all night, and was able to sit up in a chair the next day, and was so infatuated with Bella that she would not let her out of her sight. But that is ahead of the story.
At midnight the house was fairly quiet, except for Jim, who kept walking around the halls because he couldn’t sleep. I got up at last and ordered him to bed, and he had the audacity to have a grievance with me.
“Look at my situation now!” he said, sitting pensively on a steam radiator. “Aunt Selina is crazy. I only kissed your hand, anyhow, and I don’t know why you sat in the den all evening; you might have known that Bella would notice it. Why couldn’t you leave me alone to my misery?”
“Very well,” I said, much offended. “After this I shall sit with Flannigan in the kitchen. He is the only gentleman in the house.”
I left him babbling apologies and went to bed, but I had an uncomfortable feeling that Bella had been a witness to our conversation, for the door into Aunt Selina’s room closed softly as I passed.
I knew beforehand that I was not going to sleep. The instant I turned out the light the nightmare events of the evening ranged themselves in a procession, or a series of tableaus, one after the other; Flannigan on the roof, with the bracelet on his palm, looking accusingly at me; Mr. Harbison and the scene on the roof, with my flippancy; and the result of that flippancy—the man on the stairs, the arms that held me, the terrible kisses that had scorched my lips—it was awful! And then the absurd situation across Aunt Selina’s bed, and Bella’s face! Oh, it was all so ridiculous—my having thought that the Harbison man was a gentleman, and finding him a cad, and worse. It was excruciatingly funny. I quite got a headache from laughing; indeed I laughed until I found I was crying, and then I knew I was going to have an attack of strangulated emotion, called hysteria. So I got up and turned on all the lights, and bathed my face with cologne, and felt better.
But I did not go to sleep. When the hall clock chimed two, I discovered I was hungry. I had had nothing since luncheon, and even the thirst following the South American goulash was gone. There was probably something to eat in the pantry, and if there was not, I was quite equal to going to the basement.
As it happened, however, I found a very orderly assortment of left-overs and a pitcher of milk, which had no business there in the pantry, and with plenty of light I was not at all frightened.
I ate bread and butter and drank milk, and was fast becoming a rational person again; I had pulled out one of the drawers part way, and with a tray across the corner I had improvised a comfortable seat. And then I noticed that the drawer was full of soiled napkins, and I remembered the bracelet. I hardly know why I decided to go through the drawer again, after Flannigan had already done it, but I did. I finished my milk and then, getting down on my knees, I proceeded systematically to empty the drawer. I took out perhaps a dozen napkins and as many doilies without finding anything. Then I took out a large tray cloth, and there was something on it that made me look farther. One corner of it had been scorched, the clear and well defined imprint of a lighted cigarette or cigar, a blackened streak that trailed off into a brown and yellow. I had a queer, trembly feeling, as if I were on the brink of a discovery—perhaps Anne’s pearls, or the cuff buttons with storks painted on china in the center. But the only thing I found, down in the corner of the drawer, was a half-burned cigarette.
To me, it seemed quite enough. It was one of the South American cigarettes, with a tobacco wrapper instead of paper, that Mr. Harbison smoked.
I was quite ill the next morning—from excitement, I suppose. Anyhow, I did not get up, and there wasn’t any breakfast. Jim said he roused Flannigan at eight o’clock, to go down and get the fire started, and then went back to bed. But Flannigan did not get up. He appeared, sheepishly, at half-past ten, and by that time Bella was down, in a towering rage, and had burned her hand and got the fire started, and had taken up a tray for Aunt Selina and herself.
As the others straggled down they boiled themselves eggs or ate fruit, and nobody put anything away. Lollie Mercer made me some tea and scorched toast, and brought it, about eleven o’clock.
“I never saw such a house,” she declared. “A dozen housemaids couldn’t put it in order. Why should every man that smokes drop ashes wherever he happens to be?”
“That’s the question of the ages,” I replied languidly. “What was Max talking so horribly about a little while ago?” Lollie looked up aggrieved.
“About nothing at all,” she declared. “Anne told me to clean the bath tubs with oil, and I did it, that’s all. Now Max says he couldn’t get it off, and his clothes stick to him, and if he should forget and strike a match in the—in the usual way, he would explode. He can clean his own tub tomorrow,” she finished vindictively.
At noon Jim came in to see me, bringing Anne as a concession to Bella. He was in a rage, and he carried the morning paper like a club in his hand.
“What sort of a newspaper lie would you call this?” he demanded irritably. “It makes me crazy; everybody with a mental image of me leaning over the parapet of the roof, waving a board, with the rest of you sitting on my legs to keep me from overbalancing!”
“Maybe there’s a picture!” Anne said hopefully.
Jim looked.
“No picture,” he announced. “I wonder why they restrained themselves! I wish Bella would keep off the roof,” he added, with fresh access of rage, “or wear a mask or veil. One of those fellows is going to recognize her, and there’ll be the deuce to pay.”
“When you are all through discussing this thing, perhaps you will tell me what is the matter,” I remarked from my couch. “Why did you lean over the parapet, Jim, and who sat on your legs?”
“I didn’t; nobody did,” he retorted, waving the newspaper. “It’s a lie out of the whole cloth, that’s what it is. I asked you girls to be decent to those reporters; it never pays to offend a newspaper man. Listen to this, Kit.”
He read the article rapidly, furiously, pausing every now and then to make an exasperated comment.
ATTEMPT AT ESCAPE FRUSTRATED MEMBERS OF THE FOUR HUNDRED DEFY THE LAW
“Special Officer McCloud, on duty at the quarantined house of James Wilson, artist and clubman, on Ninety-fifth Street, reported this morning a daring attempt at escape, made at 3 A.M. It is in this house that some eight or nine members of the smart set were imprisoned during the course of a dinner party, when the Japanese butler developed smallpox. The party shut in the house includes Miss Katherine McNair, the daughter of Theodore McNair, of the Inter-Ocean system; Mr. and Mrs. Dallas Brown; the Misses Mercer; Maxwell Reed, the well-known clubman and whip; and a Mr. Thomas Harbison, guest of the Dallas Browns and a South American.
“Officer McCloud’s story, told to a Chronicle reporter this morning, is as follows: The occupants of the house had been uneasy all day. From the air of subdued bustle, and from a careful inspection of the roof, made by the entire party during the afternoon, his suspicion had been aroused. Nothing unusual, however, occurred during the early part of the night. From eight o’clock to twelve, McCloud was relieved from duty, his place being taken by Michael Shane, of the Eighty-sixth Street Station.
“When McCloud came on duty at midnight, Shane reported that about eleven o’clock the searchlight of a steamer on the river, flashing over the house, had shown a man crouching on the parapet, evidently surveying the roof across, which at this point is only twelve feet distant, with a view of making his escape. One seeing Shane below, however, he had beat a retreat, but not before the officer had seen him distinctly. He was dressed in evening clothes and wore a light tan overcoat.
“Officer McCloud relieved Shane at midnight, and sent for a plain-clothes man from the station house. This man was stationed on the roof of the Bevington residence next door, with strict injunctions to prevent an escape from the quarantined mansion. Nothing suspicious having occurred, the man on the roof left about 3 A.M., reporting to McCloud below that everything was quiet. At that moment, glancing skyward, one of the officers was astounded to see a long narrow board project itself from the coping of the Wildon house, waver uncertainly for a moment, and then advance stealthily toward the parapet across. When it was within a foot or two of a resting place, McCloud called sharply to the invisible refugee above, at the same time firing his revolver in the ground.
“The result was surprising. The board stopped, trembled, swayed a little, and dropped, missing the vigilant officers by a hair’s breadth, and crashing to the cement with a terrific force. An inspection of the roof from the Bevington house, later, revealed nothing unusual. It is evident, however, that the quarantine is proving irksome to the inhabitants of the sequestered residence, most of whom are typical society folk, without resources in themselves. Their condition, without valets and maids, is certainly pitiable. It has been rumored that the ladies are doing their own hair, and that the gentlemen have been reduced to putting their own buttons in their shirts. This deplorable situation, however, is unavoidable.
“The vigilance of the board of health has been most commendable in this case. Beginning with a wager over the telephone that they would break quarantine in twenty-four hours, and ending with the attempt to span a twelve-foot gulf with a board, over which to cross to freedom, these shut-in society folk have shown characteristic disregard of the laws of the state. It is quite time to extend to the millionaire the same strictness that keeps the commuter at home for three weeks with the measles; that makes him get the milk bottles and groceries from the gate post and smell like dog soap for a month afterward, as a result of disinfection.’”
We sat in dead silence for a minute. Then:
“Perhaps it is true,” I said. “Not of you, Jim—but some one may have tried to get out that way. In fact, I think it extremely likely.”
“Who? Flannigan? You couldn’t drive him out. He’s having the time of his life. Do you suspect me?”
“Come away and don’t fight,” Anne broke in pacifically. “You will have to have luncheon sent in, Jimmy; nobody has ordered anything from the shops, and I feel like old Mother Hubbard.”
“I wish you would all go out,” I said wearily. “If every man in the house says he didn’t try to get over to the next roof last night, well and good. But you might look and see if the board is still lying where it fell.”
There was an instantaneous rush for the window, and a second’s pause. Then Jimmy’s voice, incredulous, awed:
“Well, I’ll be—blessed! There’s the board!”
I stayed in my room all that day. My head really ached and then, too, I did not care to meet Mr. Harbison. It would have to come; I realized that a meeting was inevitable, but I wanted time to think how I would meet him. It would be impossible to cut him, without rousing the curiosity of the others to fever pitch; and it was equally impossible to ignore the disgraceful episode on the stairs. As it happened, however, I need not have worried. I went down to dinner, languidly, when every one was seated, and found Max at my right, and Mr. Harbison moved over beside Bella. Every one was talking at once, for Flannigan, ambling around the table as airily as he walked his beat, had presented Bella with her bracelet on a salad plate, garnished with romaine. He had found it in the furnace room, he said, where she must have dropped it. And he looked at me stealthily, to approve his mendacity!
Every one was famished, and as they ate they discussed the board in the area way, and pretended to deride it as a clever bit of press work, to revive a dying sensation. No one was deceived; Anne’s pearls and the attempt to escape, coming just after, pointed only to one thing. I looked around the table, dazed. Flannigan, almost the only unknown quantity, might have tried to escape the night before, but he would not have been in dress clothes. Besides, he must be eliminated as far as the pearls were concerned, having been locked in the furnace room the night they were stolen. There was no one among the girls to suspect. The Mercer girls had stunning pearls, and could secure all they wanted legitimately; and Bella disliked them. Oh, there was no question about it, I decided; Dallas and Anne had taken a wolf to their bosom—or is it a viper?—and the Harbison man was the creature. Although I must say that, looking over the table, at Jimmy’s breadth and not very imposing personality, at Max’s lean length, sallow skin, and bold dark eyes, at Dallas, blond, growing bald and florid, and then at the Harbison boy, tall, muscular, clear-eyed and sunburned, one would have taken Max at first choice as the villain, with Dal next, Jim third, and the Harbison boy not in the running.
It was just after dinner that the surprise was sprung on me. Mr. Harbison came around to me gravely, and asked me if I felt able to go up on the roof. On the roof, after last night! I had to gather myself together; luckily, the others were pushing back their chairs, showing Flannigan the liqueur glasses to take up, and lighting cigars.
“I do not care to go,” I said icily.
“The others are coming,” he persisted, “and I—I could give you an arm up the stairs.”
“I believe you are good at that,” I said, looking at him steadily. “Max, will you help me to the roof?”
Mr. Harbison really turned rather white. Then he bowed ceremoniously and left me.
Max got me a wrap, and every one except Mr. Harbison and Bella, who was taking a mass of indigestables to Aunt Selina, went to the roof.
“Where is Tom?” Anne asked, as we reached the foot of the stairs. “Gone ahead to fix things,” was the answer. But he was not there. At the top of the last flight I stopped, dumb with amazement; the roof had been transformed, enchanted. It was a fairy-land of lights and foliage and colors. I had to stop and rub my eyes. From the bleakness of a tin roof in February to the brightness and greenery of a July roof garden!
“You were the immediate inspiration, Kit,” Dallas said. “Harbison thought your headache might come from lack of exercise and fresh air, and he has worked us like nailers all day. I’ve a blister on my right palm, and Harbison got shocked while he was wiring the place, and nearly fell over the parapet. We bought out two full-sized florists by telephone.”
It was the most amazing transformation. At each corner a pole had been erected, and wires crossed the roof diagonally, hung with red and amber bulbs. Around the chimneys had been massed evergreen trees in tubs, hiding their brick-and-mortar ugliness, and among the trees tiny lights were strung. Along the parapet were rows of geometrical boxwood plants in bright red crocks, and the flaps of a crimson and white tent had been thrown open, showing lights within, and rugs, wicker chairs, and cushions.
Max raised a glass of benedictine and posed for a moment, melodramatically.
“To the Wilson roof garden!” he said. “To Kit, who inspired; to the creators, who perspired; and to Takahiro—may he not have expired.”
Every one was very gay; I think the knowledge that tomorrow Aunt Selina might be with them urged them to make the most of this last night of freedom. I tried to be jolly, and succeeded in being feverish. Mr. Harbison did not come up to enjoy what he had wrought. Jim brought up his guitar and sang love songs in a beautiful tenor, looking at Bella all the time. And Bella sat in a steamer chair, with a rug over her and a spangled veil on her head, looking at the boats on the river—about as soft and as chastened as an an acetylene headlight.
And after Max had told the most improbable tale, which Leila advised him to sprinkle salt on, and Dallas had done a clog dance, Bella said it was time for her complexion sleep and went downstairs, and broke up the party.
“If she only give half as an much care to her immortal soul,” Anne said when she had gone, “as she does to her skin, she would let that nice Harbison boy alone. She must have been brutal to him tonight, for he went to bed at nine o’clock. At least, I suppose he went to bed, for he shut himself in the studio, and when I knocked he advised me not to come in.”
I had pleaded my headache as an excuse for avoiding Aunt Selina all day, and she had not sent for me. Bella was really quite extraordinary. She was never in the habit of putting herself out for any one, and she always declared that the very odor of a sick room drove her to Scotch and soda. But here she was, rubbing Aunt Selina’s back with chloroform liniment—and you know how that smells—getting her up in a chair, dressed in one of Bella’s wadded silk robes, with pillows under her feet, and then doing her hair in elaborate puffs—braiding her gray switch and bringing it, coronet-fashion, around the top of her head. She even put rice powder on Aunt Selina’s nose, and dabbed violet water behind her ears, and said she couldn’t understand why she (Aunt Selina) had never married, but, of course, she probably would some day!
The result was, naturally, that the old lady wouldn’t let Bella out of her sight, except to go to the kitchen for something to eat for her. That very day Bella got the doctor to order ale for Aunt Selina (oh, yes; the doctor could come in; Dal said “it was all a-coming in, and nothing going out”) and she had three pints of Bass, and learned to eat anchovies and caviare—all in one day.
Bella’s conduct to Jim was disgraceful. She snubbed him, ignored him, tramped on him, and Jim was growing positively flabby. He spent most of his time writing letters to the board of health and playing solitaire. He was a pathetic figure.
Well, we went to bed fairly early. Bella had massaged Aunt Selina’s face and rubbed in cold cream, Anne and Dallas had compromised on which window should be open in their bedroom, and the men had matched to see who should look at the furnace. I did not expect to sleep, but the cold night air had done its work, and I was asleep almost immediately.
Some time during the early part of the night I wakened, and, after turning and twisting uneasily, I realized that I was cold. The couch in Bella’s dressing room was comfortable enough, but narrow and low. I remember distinctly (that was what was so maddening; everybody thought I dreamed it)—I remember getting an eiderdown comfort that was folded at my feet, and pulling it up around me. In the luxury of its warmth I snuggled down and went to sleep almost instantly. It seemed to me I had slept for hours, but it was probably an hour or less, when something roused me. The room was perfectly dark, and there was not a sound save the faint ticking of the clock, but I was wide awake.
And then came the incident that in its ghastly, horrible absurdity made the rest of the people shout with laughter the next day. It was not funny then. For suddenly the eiderdown comfort began to slip. I heard no footstep, not the slightest sound approaching me, but the comfort moved; from my chin, inch by inch, it slipped to my shoulders; awfully, inevitably, hair-raisingly it moved. I could feel my blood gather around my heart, leaving me cold and nerveless. As it passed my hands I gave an involuntary clutch for it, to feel it slip away from my fingers. Then the full horror of the situation took hold of me; as the comfort slid past my feet I sat up and screamed at the top of my voice.
Of course, people came running in all sorts of things. I was still sitting up, declaring I had seen a ghost and that the house was haunted. Dallas was struggling for the second armhole of his dressing gown and Bella had already turned on the lights. They said I had had a nightmare, and not to sleep on my back, and perhaps I was taking grippe.
And just then we heard Jimmy run down the stairs, and fall over something, almost breaking his wrist. It was the eiderdown comfort, half-way up the studio staircase!
Aunt Selina got up the next morning and Jim told her all the strange things that had been happening. She fixed on Flannigan, of course, although she still suspected Betty of her watch and other valuables. The incident of the comfort she called nervous indigestion and bad hours.
She spent the entire day going through the storeroom and linen closets, and running her fingers over things for dust. Whenever she found any she looked at me, drew a long breath, and said, “Poor James!” It was maddening. And when she went through his clothes and found some buttons off (Jim didn’t keep a man, and Takahiro had stopped at his boots) she looked at me quite awfully.
“His mother was a perfect housekeeper,” she said. “James was brought up in clothes with the buttons on, put on clean shelves.”
“Didn’t they put them on him?” I asked, almost hysterically. It had been a bad morning, after a worse night. Every one had found fault with the breakfast, and they straggled down one at a time until I was frantic. Then Flannigan had talked to me about the pearls, and Mr. Harbison had said, “Good morning,” very stiffly, and nearly rattled the inside of the furnace out.
Early in the morning, too, I overheard a scrap of conversation between the policeman and our gentleman adventurer from South America. Something had gone wrong with the telephone and Mr. Harbison was fussing over it with a screw driver and a pair of scissors—all the tools he could find. Flannigan was lifting rugs to shake them on the roof—Bella’s order.
“Wash the table linen!” he was grumbling. “I’ll do what I can that’s necessary. Grub has to be cooked, and dishes has to be washed—I’ll admit that. If you’re particular, make up your bed every day; I don’t object. But don’t tell me we have to use thirty-three table napkins a day. What did folks do before napkins was invented? Tell me that!”—triumphantly.
“What’s the answer?” Mr. Harbison inquired absently, evidently with the screw driver in his mouth.
“Used their pocket handkerchiefs! And if the worst comes to the worst, Mr. Harbison, these folks here can use their sleeves, for all I care—not that the women has any sleeves to speak of. Wash clothes I will not.”
“Well, don’t worry Mrs. Wilson about it,” the other voice said. Flannigan straightened himself with a grunt.
“Mrs. Wilson!” he said. “A lot she would worry. She’s been a disappointment to me, Mr. Harbison, me thinking that now she’d come back to him, after leavin’ him the way she did, they’d be like two turtle doves. Lord! The cook next door—”
But what the cook had told about Bella and Jimmy was not divulged, for the Harbison man caught him up with a jerk and sent Flannigan, grumbling, with his rugs to the roof.
It did not seem possible to carry on the deception much longer, but if things were bad now, what would they be when Aunt Selina learned she had been lied to, made ridiculous, generally deceived? And how would I be able to live in the house with her when she did know? Luckily, every one was so puzzled over the mystery in the house that numbers of little things that would have been absolutely damning were never noticed at all. For instance, my asking Jimmy at luncheon that day if he took cream in his coffee! And Max coming to the rescue by dropping his watch in his glass of water, and creating a diversion and giving everybody an opportunity to laugh by saying not to mind, it had been in soak before.
Just after luncheon Aunt Selina brought me some undergarments of Jim’s to be patched. She explained at length that he had always worn out his undergarments, because he always squirmed around so when he was sitting. And she showed me how to lay one of the garments over a pillow to get the patch in properly.
It was the most humiliating moment of my life, but there was no escape. I took my sewing to the roof, while she went away to find something else for me to do when that was finished, and I sat with the thing on my knee and stared at it, while rebellious tears rolled down my cheeks. The patch was not the shape of the hole at all, and every time I took a stitch I sewed it fast to the pillow beneath. It was terrible. Jim came up after a while and sat down across from me and watched, without saying anything. I suppose what he felt would not have been proper to say to me. We had both reached the point where adequate language failed us. Finally he said:
“I wish I were dead.”
“So do I,” I retorted, jerking the thread.
“Where is she now?”
“Looking for more of these.” I indicated the garment over the pillow, and he wiggled. “Please don’t squirm,” I said coldly. “You will wear out your—lingerie, and I will have to mend them.”
He sat very still for five minutes, when I discovered that I had put the patch in crosswise instead of lengthwise and that it would not fit. As I jerked it out he sneezed.
“Or sneeze,” I added venomously. “You will tear your buttons off, and I will have to sew them on.”
Jim rose wrathfully. “Don’t sit, don’t sneeze,” he repeated. “Don’t stand, I suppose, for fear I will wear out my socks. Here, give me that. If the fool thing has to be mended, I’ll do it myself.”
He went over to a corner of the parapet and turned his back to me. He was very much offended. In about a minute he came back, triumphant, and held out the result of his labor. I could only gasp. He had puckered up the edges of the hole like the neck of a bag, and had tied the thread around it. “You—you won’t be able to sit down,” I ventured.
“Don’t have any time to sit,” he retorted promptly. “Anyhow, it will give some, won’t it? It would if it was tied with elastic instead of thread. Have you any elastic?”
Lollie came up just then, and Jim took himself and his mending downstairs. Luckily, Aunt Selina found several letters in his room that afternoon while she was going over his clothes, and as it took Jim some time to explain them, she forgot the task she had given me altogether.
When Lollie came up to the roof, she closed the door to the stairs, and coming over, drew a chair close to mine.
“Have you seen much of Tom today?” she asked, as an introduction.
“I suppose you mean Mr. Harbison, Lollie,” I said. “No—not any more than I could help. Don’t whisper, he couldn’t possibly hear you. And if it’s scandal I don’t want to know it.”
“Look here, Kit,” she retorted, “you needn’t be so superior. If I like to talk scandal, I’m not so sure you aren’t making it.”
That was the way right along: I was making scandal; I brought them there to dinner; I let Bella in!
And, of course, Anne came up then, and began on me at once.
“You are a very bad girl,” she began. “What do you mean by treating Tom Harbison the way you do? He is heart-broken.”
“I think you exaggerate my influence over him,” I retorted. “I haven’t treated him badly, because I haven’t paid any attention to him.”
Anne threw up her hands.
“There you are!” she said. “He worked all day yesterday fixing this place for you—yes, for you, my dear. I am not blind—and last night you refused to let him bring you up.”
“He told you!” I flamed.
“He wondered what he had done. And as you wouldn’t let him come within speaking distance of you, he came to me.”
“I am sorry, Anne, since you are fond of him,” I said. “But to me he is impossible—intolerable. My reasons are quite sufficient.”
“Kit is perfectly right, Anne,” Leila broke in. “I tell you, there is something queer about him,” she added in a portentous whisper.
Anne stiffened.
“He is perfect,” she declared. “Of good family, warm-hearted, courageous, handsome, clever—what more do you ask?”
“Honesty,” said Leila hotly. “That a man should be what he says he is.”
Anne and I both stared.
“It is your Mr. Harbison,” Leila went on, “who tried to escape from the house by putting a board across to the next roof!”
“I don’t believe it,” said Anne. “You might bring me a picture of him, board in hand, and I wouldn’t believe it.”
“Don’t then,” Lollie said cruelly. “Let him get away with your pearls; they are yours. Only, as sure as anything, the man who tried to escape from the house had a reason for escaping, and the papers said a man in evening dress and light overcoat. I found Mr. Harbison’s overcoat today lying in a heap in one of the maids’ rooms, and it was covered with brick dust all over the front. A button had even been torn off.”
“Pooh!” Anne said, when she had recovered herself a little. “There isn’t any reason, as far as that goes, why Flannigan shouldn’t have worn Tom’s overcoat, or—any of the others.”
“Flannigan!” Leila said loftily. “Why, his arms are like piano legs; he couldn’t get into it. As for the others, there is only one person who would fit, or nearly fit, that overcoat, and that is Dallas, Anne.”
While Anne was choking down her wrath, Leila got up and darted out of the tent. When she came back she was triumphant.
“Look,” she said, holding out her hand. And on her palm lay a lightish brown button. “I found it just where the paper said the board was thrown out, and it is from Mr. Harbison’s overcoat, without a doubt.”
Of course I should not have been surprised. A man who would kiss a woman on a dark staircase—a woman he had known only two days—was capable of anything.
“Kit has only been a little keener than the rest of us,” Lollie said. “She found him out yesterday.”
“Upon my word,” said Anne indignantly, preparing to go, “if I didn’t know you girls so well, I would think you were crazy. And now, just to offset this, I can tell you something. Flannigan told me this morning not to worry; that he has my pearl collar spotted, and that YOUNG LADIES WILL HAVE THEIR JOKES!”
Yes, as I said before, it was a cheerful, joy-producing situation.
I sat and thought it over after Anne’s parting shot, when Leila had flounced downstairs. Things were closing in; I gave the situation twenty-four hours to develop. At the end of that time Flannigan would accuse me openly of knowing where the pearls were; I would explain my silly remark to him and the mine would explode—under Aunt Selina.
I was sunk in dejected reverie when some one came on the roof. When he was opposite the opening in the tent, I saw Mr. Harbison, and at that moment he saw me. He paused uncertainly, then he made an evident effort and came over to me.
“You are—better today?”
“Quite well, thank you.”
“I am glad you find the tent useful. Does it keep off the wind?”
“It is quite a shelter”—frigidly.
He still stood, struggling for something to say. Evidently nothing came to his mind, for he lifted the cap he was wearing, and turning away, began to work with the wiring of the roof. He was clever with tools; one could see that. If he was a professional gentleman-burglar, no doubt he needed to be. After a bit, finding it necessary to climb to the parapet, he took off his coat, without even a glance in my direction, and fell to work vigorously.
One does not need to like a man to admire him physically, any more than one needs to like a race horse or any other splendid animal. No one could deny that the man on the parapet was a splendid animal; he looked quite big enough and strong enough to have tossed his slender bridge across the gulf to the next roof, without any difficulty, and coordinate enough to have crossed on it with a flourish to safety.
Just then there was a rending, tearing sound from the corner and a muttered ejaculation. I looked up in time to see Mr. Harbison throw up his arms, make a futile attempt to regain his balance, and disappear over the edge of the roof. One instant he was standing there, splendid, superb; the next, the corner of the parapet was empty, all that stood there was a broken, splintered post and a tangle of wires.
I could not have moved at first; at least, it seemed hours before the full significance of the thing penetrated my dazed brain. When I got up I seemed to walk, to crawl, with leaden weights holding back my feet.
When I got to the corner I had to catch the post for support. I knew somebody was saying, “Oh, how terrible!” over and over. It was only afterward that I knew it had been myself. And then some other voice was saying, “Don’t be alarmed. Please don’t be frightened. I’m all right.”
I dared to look over the parapet, finally, and instead of a crushed and unspeakable body, there was Mr. Harbison, sitting about eight feet below me, with his feet swinging into space and a long red scratch from the corner of his eye across his cheek. There was a sort of mansard there, with windows, and just enough coping to keep him from rolling off.
“I thought you had fallen—all the way,” I gasped, trying to keep my lips from trembling. “I—oh, don’t dangle your feet like that!”
He did not seem at all glad of his escape. He sat there gloomily, peering into the gulf beneath.
“If it wasn’t so—er—messy and generally unpleasant,” he replied without looking up, “I would slide off and go the rest of the way.”
“You are childish,” I said severely. “See if you can get through the window behind you. If you can not, I’ll come down and unfasten it.” But the window was open, and I had a chance to sit down and gather up the scattered ends of my nerves. To my surprise, however, when he came back he made no effort to renew our conversation. He ignored me completely, and went to work at once to repair the damage to his wires, with his back to me.
“I think you are very rude,” I said at last. “You fell over there and I thought you were killed. The nervous shock I experienced is just as bad as if you had gone—all the way.”
He put down the hammer and came over to me without speaking. Then, when he was quite close, he said:
“I am very sorry if I startled you. I did not flatter myself that you would be profoundly affected, in any event.”
“Oh, as to that,” I said lightly, “it makes me ill for days if my car runs over a dog.” He looked at me in silence. “You are not going to get up on that parapet again?”
“Mrs. Wilson,” he said, without paying the slightest attention to my question, “will you tell me what I have done?”
“Done?”
“Or have not done? I have racked my brains—stayed awake all of last night. At first I hoped it was impersonal, that, womanlike you were merely venting general disfavor on one particular individual. But—your hostility is to me, personally.”
I raised my eyebrows, coldly interrogative.
“Perhaps,” he went on calmly—“perhaps I was a fool here on the roof—the night before last. If I said anything that I should not, I ask your pardon. If it is not that, I think you ought to ask mine!”
I was angry enough then.
“There can be only one opinion about your conduct,” I retorted warmly. “It was worse than brutal. It—it was unspeakable. I have no words for it—except that I loathe it—and you.”
He was very grim by this time. “I have heard you say something like that before—only I was not the unfortunate in that case.”
“Oh!” I was choking.
“Under different circumstances I should be the last person to recall anything so—personal. But the circumstances are unusual.” He took an angry step toward me. “Will you tell me what I have done? Or shall I go down and ask the others?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I cried, “or I will tell them what you did! How you waylaid me on those stairs there, and forced your caresses, your kisses, on me! Oh, I could die with shame!”
The silence that followed was as unexpected as it was ominous. I knew he was staring at me, and I was furious to find myself so emotional, so much more the excited of the two. Finally, I looked up.
“You can not deny it,” I said, a sort of anti-climax.
“No.” He was very quiet, very grim, quite composed. “No,” he repeated judicially. “I do not deny it.”
He did not? Or he would not? Which?