Mrs. Severance, her whole weight against the door, felt it push at her fiercely without opening, and, even in the midst of her turmoil, smiled. Mr. Severance had never been exactly what one would call an athlete—
She slackened her pressure, little by anxious little. Her hand crept down to the knob, then she jerked it sharply and stood back and Mr. Piper came stumbling into the room, a little too fast for dignity. He had to catch to her to save himself from falling but as soon as he had recovered his balance he jerked his hands away from her as if they had taken hold of something that hurt him and when he stood up she saw that his face was grey all over and that his breath came in little hard sniffs through his nose.
“Sorry, Sargent,” she said easily. “I heard your key but that silly old door is sticking again. You didn't hurt yourself, did you?”
For an instant she thought that everything was going to be perfectly simple—his face had changed so, with an intensity of relief almost childish, at the sound of her accustomed voice. Then the greyness came back.
“Do you mind—introducing me—Rose—to the gentleman—you are dining with tonight?” he said with a difficulty of speech as if actual words were not things he was accustomed to using. “I merely—called—to be quite sure.”
She managed to look as puzzled as possible.
“The gentleman?”
“Oh yes, the gentleman.” He seemed neither to be particularly disgusted nor murderously angry—only so utterly tired in body and spirit that she thought oddly that it seemed almost as if any sudden gesture or movement might crumble him into pieces of fine grey paper at her feet.
“Oh, there isn't any use in pretending, Rose—any more. I have my information.”
“Yes? From whom?”
“What on earth does it matter? Elizabeth—since you choose to know.”
“Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Severance softly. She could not imagine how time, even when successfully played for and gained, could help the situation very much—but that was the only thing she could think of doing, and she did it, therefore, with every trick of deliberation she knew, as if any instant saved before he went into the dining-room might bring salvation.
“Do you know, I was always a little doubtful about Elizabeth. She was a little too beautifully incurious about everything to be quite real—and a little too well satisfied with her place, even on what we paid her. But of course is she has been supplementing her salary with private-detective work for you—”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I suppose you were foolish enough to give her one of your private numbers,” she said a trifle acidly. “Which will mean that you will be paying her a modest blackmail all the rest of your life, and you'll probably have to provide for her in your will. Oh, I know Elizabeth! She'll be perfectly secret—if she's paid for it—she'll never make you willing to risk the scandal by asking for more than just enough. But if this is the way you carry on all your confidential investigations, Sargent—well, it's fortunate you have large means—”
“She doesn't know who I am.”
“Oh Sargent, Sargent! When all she has to do is to subscribe to 'Town and Country.' Or call up the number you gave her, some time, and ask where it is.”
“There are the strictest orders about nobody but myself ever answering the telephones in my private office.”
“And servants are always perfectly obedient—and there are no stupid ones—and accidents never happen. Sargent, really—”
“That doesn't matter. I didn't come here to talk about Elizabeth.” “Really? I should think you might have. I could have given you all the information you required a good deal less expensively—and now, I suppose, I'll have to think up some way of getting rid of Elizabeth as well. I can't pay her off with one of my new dresses this time—”
“Who is he?”
“Suppose we start talking about it from the beginning, Sargent—?”
“Whereis he?”
“In the dining-room, I imagine. It wouldn't be very well bred of anyone, would it, to come out and be introduced in the middle of this very loud, very vulgar quarrel that you are making with me—”
“I'm going to see.”
“No, Sargent.”
“Let me pass, Rose!”
“I will not. Sargent, I will not let you make an absolute fool of yourself before my friends before you give me a chance to explain—”
“I will, I tell you! I will!Let me go!”
They were struggling undignifiedly in the center of the room, her firm strong hands tight over his wrists as he pawed at her, trying to wrench himself away. Mr. Piper was a gentleman no longer—nor a business man—nor a figure of nation-wide importance—he was only a small furious figure with a face as grey and distorted as a fighting ape's who was clutching at the woman in front of him as if he would like to tear her with his hands. A red swimming had fallen over his eyes—all he knew was that the woman-person in front of him had fooled him more bitterly and commonly than anyone had been fooled since Adam—and that if he could not get loose in some way or other from the hateful strength that was holding him, he would burst into the disgusting tears of a vicious small boy who is being firmly held down and spanked by an older girl. Grammar, manners and sense had gone from him as completely as if he had never possessed them.
“Lemme go! oh damn you, damn you—youwoman—youdevil—lemmego!”
“Bequiet,Sargent! Oh shut up, youfool, shut up!”
A noise came from the kitchen—a noise like the sound of a man falling over boxes. Mr. Piper struggled furiously—Paris was crawling out of the window—Paris, the sleek, sly chamberer, the gay hateful cuckoo of his private nest was getting away! Mrs. Severance turned her head toward the noise a second. Mr. Piper fought like a crippled wrestler.
“Grr-ah! Ah, would you, would you?”
He had wrenched one hand free for an instant—it went to his pocket and came out of it with something that shone and was hard like a new metal toy.
“Nowwill you lemme go?” But Mrs. Severance tried to grab for the hand with the revolver in it instead, and succeeded only in striking the barrel a little aside. There was a noise that sounded like a cannon-cracker bursting in Mr. Piper's face—it was so near—and then he was standing up, shaking all over, but free and a man ready to explain a number of very painful things to Paris as soon as he caught him. He took one step toward the dining-room, sheer rage tugging at his body as high wind tugs at a bough. Now that woman was out of the way——
And then he saw that she was out of the way indeed. She could not have fallen without his hearing her fall—how could she?—but she was lying on the floor in a crumple of clothes and one of her arms was thrown queerly out from her side as if it did not belong to her body any longer. He stood looking at her for what seemed one long endless wave of uncounted time and that firecracker noise he had heard kept echoing and echoing through his head like the sound of loud steps along a long and empty corridor. Then he suddenly dropped the pistol and knelt clumsily beside her.
“Rose! Rose!” he started calling huskily, his hands feeling with frantic awkwardness for her pulse and her heart, as Oliver Crowe ran into the room through the curtains.
Oliver thought that he had never been quite so sure of anything as he was that he must be insane. He was insane. Very shortly some heavy person in uniform would walk into the tidy kitchen where he and Ted were crouching like moving-picture husbands and remark with a kind smile that the Ahkoond of Whilom was giving a tea-party in the Mountains of the Moon that afternoon and that unless Oliver (or, as he was probable better known) St. Oliver, came back at once in the nice private car with the wire netting over its windows, everybody from God the Father Almighty to Carrie Chapman Catt would be highly displeased. For a moment Oliver thought of lunatic asylums almost lovingly—they had such fine high walls and smooth green lawns and you were so perfectly safe there from anything ever happening that was real. Then he jumped—that must be Mrs. Severance opening the door.
“What are we going todo?” he said to Ted in a fierce whisper.
Ted looked at him stupidly. “Do? When I don't know whether I'm on my feet or my head?” he said. His drugged passiveness showed Oliver with desolating clarity that anything that could be done would have to be done by himself. He crept over toward the window with a wild wish that black magic were included in a Yale curriculum—the only really sensible thing he could think of doing would be for both of them to vanish through the wall.
“Look! Fire-escape!”
“What?”
“Fire-escape!”
“All right. You take it.”
Oliver had been sliding the window up all the while, cursing softly and horribly at each damnatory creak. Yes—there it was—and people thought fire-escapes ugly. Personally, Oliver had seldom seen anything in his life which combined concrete utility with abstract beauty so ideally as that little flight of iron steps leading down the entry outside the window into blackness.
“You first, Ted.”
“Can't.” The word seemed to come despairingly out of the bottom of his stomach.
“Came here. Own accord. Got to see it through. Take my medicine.”
“You fool, she doesn't want you here! Think of Elinor!” For a moment Oliver thought Ted was going to blaze into more blind rage. Then he checked himself.
“I am. But listen to that.”
The voices that came to them from the living-room were certainly both high and excited—and the second that Oliver heard one of them he knew that all his most preposterous suppositions on the drive down from Southampton had come preposterously and rather ghastly true.
“Well,listento it! Do you know who the man is now? And will you get out on the fire-escape, youfool?”
Ted listened intently for the space of a dozen seconds. Then “Oh my God!” he said and his head went into his hands. Oliver crept over to him.
“Ted, listen—oh listen, damn you! What's the use of acting the chivalrous fool,now? Don't you see? Don't you understand? Don't you get it that if you leave she can explain it some way or other—that all you're doing by staying is ruining yourself and Elinor for a point of honor that hasn't any honortoit?”
“Oh sure. Sure. But listen to him—why great God, Ollie, if he has a gun he might kill her—probably will—Don't you see it's just because I hate the whole business now—and her—and myself—th'at I've got to stick it out? You go, Ollie, it's none of your business—”
“You go. You blessed idiot, there's no use of both of us smashing. If anybody's got to stay—I can bluff it out a good deal better than you can—trust me—”
“Oh rats. Not that it isn't very decent of you, Ollie, it is—and you'd do it—but I wouldn't even be apersonto let you—”
They were both on their feet, talking in jerks, ears strained for every sound from that other room.
“It'sperfectlysimple—nobody's going to pull any gunplay—good Lord, imagine poor old Mr. Piper—” said Oliver uncertainly, and then as noises came to them that meant more than just talking, “Get down that fire-escape!”
“I can't. Let go of me, Ollie. I mustn't Listen—something's up—something bad! Get out of the way there, Ollie, I've got to go in! Itisn'tyour funeral!”
“Well, it isn't going to be yours!” said Oliver through shut teeth—Ted's last remark had, somehow been a little too irritating. He thought savagely that there was only one way of dealing with completely honorable fools—Ted shouldn't, by the Lord!—-Oliver had gone to just a little too much trouble in the last dozen hours to build Ted a happy home to let any of Ted's personal wishes in the matter interrupt him now. He stepped back with a gesture of defeat but his feet gripped at the floor like a boxer's and his eyes fixed burningly on the point of Ted's jaw. Wait a split-second—he wasn't near enough—now—there!
His fist landed exactly where he had meant it to and for an instant he felt as if he had broken all the bones in his hand. Ted was back against the wall, his mouth dropping open, his whole face frozen like a face caught in a snapshot unawares to a sudden glare of immense and ludicrous astonishment. Then he began to give at the knees like a man who has been smitten with pie in a custard-comedy and Oliver recovered from his surprise at both of them sufficiently to step in and catch him as he slumped, face forward.
He laid him carefully down on the floor, trying feverishly to remember how long a knockout lasted. Not nearly long enough, anyway. Ropes. A gag. His eyes roved frantically about the kitchen.Towels!
He was filling Ted's mouth with clean dish-rag and thinking dully that it was just like handling a man in the last stages of alcohol—the body had the same limp refractory heaviness all over—when he heard something that sounded like the bursting of a large blown-up paper bag from the other room. He accepted the fact with neither surprise nor curiosity. Mr. Piper had shot Mrs. Severance. Or Mrs. Severance had shot Mr. Piper. That was all.
As soon as he had safely disposed of Ted—for an eery moment he had actually considered stowing him away in a drawer of the kitchen-cabinet—it might be well to go in and investigate the murder.
And then either Mrs. Severance or Mr. Piper—whichever it was of the two that remained alive—might very well shoot him unless he or she had shot himself or herself first. It seemed to Oliver that the latter event would save everyone a great deal of trouble.
He did not relish the idea of being left alone in a perfectly strange apartment with two corpses and one gagged, bound and unconscious best friend—but he liked the picture of himself trying to make explanations to either his hostess or Mr. Piper when, in either case, the other party to the argument would be in possession of a loaded revolver, still less. He hoped that if Mrs. Severance were the survivor she had had a sufficiently Western upbringing at least to know how to shoot. He had no particular wish to die—but anything was better than being mangled—and a reminiscence of Hedda Gabler's poet's technique with firearms caused his stomach to contract quite painfully as he tightened the knots around Ted's ankles. Ted was the devil and all to get out on the fire-escape—and then you had to tie him so that he wouldn't roll off.
He crawled back through the window, dusted his trousers, and settled his necktie as carefully as if he were going to be married. Married. And he had hoped, he thought rather pitiably, that even though Nancy had so firmly decided to blight him forever she might have a few pleasant memories of their engagement at least. Instead—well, he could see the headlines now. “Big Financier, Youth and Mystery Woman Die in Triple Slaying.” “Dead—Oliver Crowe, Yale 1917, of Melgrove, L. I.”
It hadn't been his job, damn it, it hadn't been his job at all. It was now, though, with Ted perfectly helpless on the fire-escape where any crazy person could take pot-shots at him as if he were a plaster pipe in a shooting gallery. The idea of escape had somehow never seriously occurred to him—what had happened in the evening already had impressed him so with a sense of inane fatality that he could not even conceive of the possibility of any-thing's coming right. In any event, Ted, tied up the way he was, was too heavy and clumsy to carry down even the most ordinary flight of stairs—and if he were going to be shot, he somehow preferred to gasp his last breaths out on a comfortably carpeted floor rather than clinging like a disreputable spider to the iron web of a fire-escape.
Oliver sighed—Nancy's firmness had admittedly quite ruined all the better things in life—but even the merest sort of mere existence had got to be, at times, a rather pleasant convention—how pleasant, he felt, he had never quite realized somehow until just now. Then, with a vague idea of getting whatever was to happen over with as quickly and decently as possible, he settled his tie once more and trotted meekly through the dining-room and beyond the curtains.
It was not what he had intended to say at all—something rather more dramatic and on the lines of “Shoot if you must this old grey head, but if you will only listen to a reasonable explanation—” had been uppermost in his mind. But the sight of Peter's father crouched over what must be Mrs. Severance's body, his weak hands fumbling for her wrist and heart, his voice thin with a senile sorrow as if he had been stricken at once and in an instant with a palsy of incurable age, brought the whole world of Southampton and house-parties and reality that Oliver thought he had lost touch with forever, back to him so vividly that all he could do was gape at the tableau on the floor.
Mr. Piper looked up and for a second of relief Oliver thought that the staring eyes had not recognized him at all. Then he realized from the look in them that who or what he was made singularly little difference now to Mr. Piper. “Water!” croaked Mr. Piper. “Water! I've shot her. Oh, poor Rose, poor Rose!” and he was plucking at her dress again with absorbed, incapable fingers.
Oliver looked around him. The gun. There must have been a gun. Where? Ohthere—and as he picked it up from under a chair he did so with much inward reverence in spite of the haste he took to it, for he felt as if it were all the next forty years of his life made little into something cold and small and of metal that he was lifting like a doll from the floor.
“Water,” said Mr. Piper again and quite horribly. “Water for Rose.”
It was only when he had gone back to the kitchen and started looking for glasses that he realized that Mrs. Severance might very possibly be dying out there in the other room. Till then the mere fact that he was not dying himself had been too large in his vision to give him time to develop proper sympathy for others. When he did, though, he hurried bunglingly, in spite of a nervous flash in which after accidentally touching the revolver in his pocket he almost threw it through the pane of the nearest window before he considered. A moment, though, and he was back with a spilling tumbler.
“Water,” said Mr. Piper with querulous satisfaction. “Give her water.” Oliver hesitated. “Where's she shot?” he said sharply.
“I don't know. Oh, I don't know. But I shot her. I shot her. Poor Rose.”
It was certainly odd, there being no blood about, thought Oliver detachedly. Internal wounds? Possibly, but even so. He dipped his fingers in the glass of water, bent over Mrs. Severance and sprinkled the drops as near her closed eyelids as possible. No sound came from her and not a muscle of her body moved, but the delicate skin of the eyelids shivered momentarily. Oliver drew a long breath and stepped back.
“She's dead,” said Mr. Piper. “She's dead.” And he began to weep, very quietly with a mouselike sound and the slow horrible tears of age. “No use trying water on her,” said Oliver loudly, and again he thought he saw the skin of the eyelids twitch a little. “Is there any brandy here—anything like that, Mr. Piper?”
“K-kitchen,” said Mr. Piper with a sniff and one of his hands came away from Mrs. Severance to fumble for a key.
“I'll go get it,” said Oliver, still rather loudly, and took one step away. Then he bent down again swiftly and poured the whole contents of the tumbler he was holding into the little hollow of Mrs. Severance's throat just above the collar-bone.“Oh!”said the dead Mrs. Severance in the tone of one who has turned on the cold in a shower unexpectedly, and she opened her eyes.
“Rose!” said Mr. Piper snifflingly. “You aren't dead? You aren't dead, dear? Rose! Rose!”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Severance again, but this time tinily and with a flavor of third acts about her, and she started to relax rather beautifully into a Dying Gladiator pose.
“I'll get some more water, Mr. Piper,” said Oliver briskly, and Mrs. Severance began to sit up again.
“I—fainted—silly of me,” she said with a consummate dazedness. “Somebody was firing revolvers—”
“I tried—I tried—I—t-tried to s-shoot you, Rose,” came from the damp little heap on the floor that was Mr. Piper.
“Really, Sargent—” said Mrs. Severance comfortably. Then she turned her head and made what Oliver was always to consider her most perfect remark. “You must think us very queer people indeed, Mr. Crowe?” she said smiling questioningly up at him.
Oliver's smile in answer held relief beyond words. It wasn't the ordinary cosmos again—quite yet—but at least from now on he felt perfectly sure that no matter how irregular anyone's actions might become, in speech at least, every last least one of the social conventions would be scrupulously observed.
“I think—if you could help me, Sargent—” said Mrs. Severance delicately.
“Oh yes, yes, yes,” from Mr. Piper very eagerly and with Oliver's and his assistance Mrs. Severance's invalid form was aided into a deep chair.
“And I think, now,” she went on, “that if I could have just a little—” She let the implication float in the air like a pretty bubble. “Perhaps—it might help us all—”
“Ohcertainly,dear,” from Mr. Piper. “I—”
“In the kitchen, you said, Mr. Piper. And you must letme,”from Oliver with complete decision. He hadn't bargained for that. Mr. Piper might not notice Ted on the fire-escape—but then again he might—and if he did he would certainly investigate—mute bound bodies were not ordinary or normal adjuncts of even the most illegal of Riverside Drive apartments. And then. Oliver's hand went down over the revolver in his pocket—if necessary he stood perfectly ready to hold up Mr. Piper at the point of his own pistol to preserve the inviolability of that kitchen.
But Mrs. Severance saved him the bother.
“If you would be so kind?” she said simply. “It's in the small cupboard—-the brown one—Sargent, you have the key?”
“Oh, yes, Rose.” Mr. Piper was looking, Oliver thought, rather more embarrassed than it was fair for any man to have to look and live. His eyes kept going pitifully and always to Mrs. Severance and then creeping, away. He produced the key, however, and gave it to Oliver silently and Oliver took the first opportunity when he was through the curtains of giving whatever fates had presided over the insanities of the evening a long cheer with nine Mrs. Severances on the end.
He carefully stayed in the kitchen fifteen minutes—devoting most of the time to a cautious examination of Ted, who seemed to be gradually recovering consciousness. At least he stirred a little when poked by Oliver's foot.
“Sleeps just like a baby—oh, the sweet little fellow—the dear little fellow—” hummed Oliver wildly as he made a few last additions to the curious network of string and towels with which he had wound Ted into the fire-escape as if he had been making him a cocoon. “Well—well—well—what a night we're having! What a night we're having and whatwillwe have next?” Then he remembered the reason for his journey and removed a bottle of brandy from the brown cup-board, found appropriate glasses and, in the ice-chest, club-soda and ginger ale. He poured himself a drink reminiscent of Paris—not that he felt he needed it for the reaction from bracing himself to die like a Pythias had left him elvishly grotesque in mind—gathered the bottles tenderly in his arms like small glass babies and went back to the living-room.
And this time he was forced to pay internal high compliment to Mr. Piper as well as to Mrs. Severance. The pitiful grey image, its knees rumpled from the floor, its features streaked like a cheap paper mask with ludicrous dreadful tears, had turned back into the President of the Commercial Bank with branches in Bombay and Melbourne and all the business-capitals of the world. Not that Mr. Piper was at ease again, exactly—to be at ease under the circumstances would merely have proved him brightly inhuman—but he looked as Oliver thought he might have on one of the Street's Black Mondays when only complete firmness and complete audacity in one could keep even the Commercial afloat at a time when the Stock Exchange had turned into a floor-full of well-dressed maniacs and houses that everyone had thought as solid as granite went to pieces like sand castles.
Oliver set down the bottles and opened them with a feeling both that he had never known Mr. Piper at all before, only Peter's father, and, spookily, that neither Peter's father nor the terrible old man who had wept on the floor beside Mrs. Severance could have any real existence—this was such a complete and unemotional Mr. Piper he had before him, a Mr. Piper, too, in spite of all the oddities of the present situation, so obviously at home in his own house.
None of them said anything in particular until the mixture in the glasses had sunk about half-way down. Then Mr. Piper remarked in a pleasant voice, “I don't often permit myself—seldom even before the country adopted prohibition—but the present circumstances seem to be—er—unusual enough—to warrant—” smiled cheerfully and lifted his glass again. When he had set it down he looked at Mrs. Severance, then at Oliver, and then started to speak.
Oliver listened with some tenseness, knowing only that whatever he might possibly have imagined might happen, what would happen, to judge from the previous events of the evening, would be undoubtedly so entirely different that prophecy was no use at all. But, even so, he was not entirely prepared for the unexpectedness of Mr. Piper's first sentence.
“I feel that I owe you very considerable apologies, Oliver,” the President of the Commercial began with a good deal of stateliness. “In fact I really owe you so many that it leaves me at rather a loss 'as to just how to begin.” He smiled a little shyly.
“Rose has explained everything,” he said, and Oliver looked at Mrs. Severance with stupefied wonder—how?
“But even so, there remains the difficulty—of my putting myself into words.”
“Silly boy,” said Mrs. Severance easily, and Oliver noted with fresh amazement that the term seemed to come from her as naturally and almost conventionally as if she had every legal American right to use it. “Let me, dear.” And Oliver felt his head begin to go round like a pinwheel.
But then—but she reallycouldn'tbe married to Mr. Piper—and yet somehow she seemed so much more married to him than Mrs. Piper ever had been—Oliver's thoughts played fantastically for an instant over the proposition that she and Mr. Piper had been secretly converted to Mohammedanism together and he looked at Mr. Piper's grey head almost as if he expected to see a large red fez suddenly drop down upon it from the ceiling.
“No, Rose,” and again Mr. Piper's voice was stately. “This is my—difficulty. No matter how hard it may be.”
“Of course I did not understand—how could I?—that Rose—was such a very good friend of your sister's and all your family's. Rose had told me something about it, I believe—but I was so—foolishly disturbed—when I came in—that really, I—well I must admit that even if I had seen you when I first came in that would hardly have been the thought uppermost in my mind at the time.” He spoke in the same tone of kindly reproof toward himself that he would have used if business worries had made him commit a small but definite act of inhospitality toward one of his guests.
“And naturally—you will think me very ignorant indeed of my son's affairs—and those of his friends—but while I had heard from Peter—of the breaking of your engagement—you will pardon me, I hope, if I touch upon a subject that must be so painful to you—I had no idea of the fact that you were—intending to leave the country—and knowing Rose thought that with her present position on 'Mode'—” he paused.
“It was very kind indeed of Mrs. Severance to offer to do what she could for me,” said Oliver non-committally. He thought he got the drift of the story now—a sheer one enough but with Mr. Piper's present reaction toward abasement and his obvious wish to believe whatever he could, it had evidently sufficed.
“I know it was silly of me having Oliver to dinner here alone—” said Mrs. Severance with the air of one ready to apologize for a very minor impropriety. “Silly and wrong—but Louise was coming too until she telephoned about Jane Ellen's little upset—and I thought we could have such fun getting supper together with Elizabeth away. I get a little tired ofalwaysentertaining my friends in restaurants, Sargent, especially when I want to talk to them without having to shout. AndreallyI neverimagined—”
She looked steadily at Mr. Piper and he seemed to shrink a little under her gaze.
“As for Elizabeth,” he said with hurried vindictiveness, “Elizabeth shall leave tomorrow morning. She—”
“Oh, we might as well keep her, Sargent,” said Mrs. Severance placidly. “You will have to pay her blackmail, of course—but after all that's really your fault a little, isn't it?—and it seems as if that was more or less what you had to do with any kind of passable servant nowadays. And Elizabeth is perfection—as a servant. As police—” she smiled a little cruelly. “Well, we shan't go into that, but I think it would be so much better to keep her. Then we'll be getting something out of her in return for our blackmail, don't you see?”
“Perhaps. Still we have no need of discussing that now. I can only say that if Elizabeth is to stay, she will have to—” “Reform? My dear Sargent! When everything she did was from the most rigidly moral motives? I had no idea she was such aclevercat, though—”
“She will have ample opportunities of exercising her cleverness in jail if I can find any means of getting her there, and I think I can. Really,” said Mr. Piper reflectively, “really when I think—”
Then he stopped.
“But you're still waiting for an—explanation—aren't you, Oliver?”
“Having been very nearly assassinated because of Elizabeth's abilities in telephone conversation, I should think he might very well be interested in knowing what is going to happen to her. However—”
“Yes,” and Mr. Piper's face became very sober. He looked at his glass as if he would be willing to resign the Presidency of the Commercial in its favor if it would only explain to Oliver for him.
“You were saying, Sargent?” said Mrs. Severance implacably.
“I was. Well, I,” he began, and then “You,” and stopped, and then he began again.
“I said that it would be—difficult—for me to explain matters to you fully, Oliver; I find it to be—even more difficult than I had supposed. I—it is rather hard for a man of my age to defend his manner of life to one of your age, even when he himself is wholly convinced that that manner is not—-unrighteous. And in this particular case, to one of his son's best friends.”
He twisted his fingers around the rim of his glass. Oliver started to speak but Mr. Piper put up his hand. “No—please—it will be so much easier if I finish what I have to say first,” he said rather pleadingly.
“Well—the situation here between Rose and myself—must be plain to you now.” Oliver nodded, he hoped in not too knowing a way. “Plain. How that situation arose—is another matter. And a matter that would take a good deal too long to tell. Except that, given the premises from which we set forth—what followed was perhaps as inevitable as most things are in life.
“That situation has been known to no other person on earth but ourselves—all these years. And now it is known. Well, Oliver, there you have it. And you happen to have us also—entirely in your hands. Because of a spying, greedy servant—and my own stupidity and distrust—we have been completely found out. And by one of my son's best friends.
“I wish that I could apologize for—all the scene before this. Better. I hope that you will believe that I am trying to do so now. But I seldom make apologies, Oliver, even when I am evidently in the wrong—and this hasn't been one of my easiest to make. And now.”
He sat back and waited, his fingers curled round his glass. And, as he looked at him, Oliver felt a little sickish, for, on the whole, he respected Mr. Piper a good deal more than his irreverent habit of mind permitted him to respect most older people, and at the same time felt pitifully sorry for him—it must be intensely humiliating to have to explain this way—and yet the only thing Oliver could do was to take the largest advantage possible of his very humiliation and straightforwardness—the truth could still do nothing at all but wreck everybody concerned.
“I give you my word of honor, Mr. Piper, to keep everything I know entirely and completely secret,” said Oliver, slowly, trying to make the large words seem as little magniloquent as possible. “That's all I can say, I guess—but it's true—you can really depend on it.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Piper quite simply. “I believe you, Oliver,” and again Oliver felt that little burn of shame in his mind.
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Severance, copying Mr. Piper finished his drink and rose. “And now, I do not wish you to misunderstand me,” he said. “I have not come to my age without realizing that there are certain services that cannot be paid for. But you have done me a very great service, Oliver—a service for which I should have been glad to give nearly everything material that I possess. I merely wish you to know that in case you should ever need—assistance—from an older man—-in any way—that is clumsily put, but I can think of no other suitable word at the moment—I am entirely at your disposal. Entirely so.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Oliver a little stiffly. Mr. Piper was certainly heaping coals of fire. Then he wondered for an instant just what Mrs. Ellicott would think if she could have heard the President of the Commercial say that to him—
Mr. Piper was moving slowly toward the door, and the politeness that had been his at the beginning of the conversation was nothing to his supreme politeness now.
“And now,” he said, as if he were asking everybody's pardon for an entirely unintentional intrusion, “I really must be getting back to Southampton—and you and Rose I imagine have still quite a bit to talk over—”
“But—” said Oliver clumsily, “but Mr. Piper—” and “Must you really, dear?” said Mrs. Severance in the softest tones of conventional wifely reproach.
Her manner was ideal but Oliver somehow and suddenly felt all the admiration he had ever had for her calm power blow away from him like smoke. He could not help extremest appreciation of her utter poise—he never would be able to, he supposed—but from now on it would be the somewhat shivery appreciation that anyone with sensitive nerves might give to the smooth mechanical efficiency of a perfectly-appointed electric-chair.
“No,” said Mr. Piper perfectly, “I insist. You certainly could not have finished your discussion before I came and for the present—well—it seems to me that I have intruded quite long enough. I wish it,” he added and Oliver understood.
“You are staying with us, over tomorrow, Oliver, are you not?” said Mr. Piper calmly, and Oliver assented. “I suppose we shall see each other at breakfast then?”
“Oh yes, sir.” And then Oliver tried to rise to Mr. Piper's magnificence of conventionality in remark. “By the way, sir, I'm driving back in Peter's car—as soon as Mrs. Severance and I have finished our talk—I couldn't pick you up anywhere, sir, could I?”
Mr. Piper smiled, consulting his watch. “There is an excellent train at 10.33—an excellent one—” he said, and again Oliver was dumfounded to realize that the whole march of events in the apartment had taken scarcely two hours.
“Thank you, Oliver, but I think I had better take that. Not that I distrust your driving in the least, but it will be fairly slow going, I imagine, over some of those roads at night—and this was one evening on which I had really intended to get a good night's sleep.”
He smiled again very quaintly.
“You'll be dancing as soon as you get back, I suppose? I understand there is to be a dance this evening?”
“Yes, sir—at least, I guess so. Told Peter I'd show up.”
“Youth,” said Mr. Piper. “Youth.” There was a certain accent of dolefulness in the way he said it.
“And now I shall call a taxi,” he said briskly.
“Can't I take you down—?” Oliver began, but
“No, no. I insist,” said Mr. Piper a little irritatedly, and then Oliver understood that though he might be quixotic on occasion, he was both human and—Oliver hesitated over the words, they seemed so odd to his youth to be using of a man who was certainly old enough to be his father—really in love with Mrs. Severance after all. So, until Mr. Piper's taxi came they chatted of indifferent matters much as they might have while watching people splashing about in the water from the porch of the swimming pool at Bar Harbor—and Oliver felt exceedingly in the way. These last dozen minutes were the hardest to get through of the whole evening, he thought rather dizzily; up till now he had almost forgotten about Ted, but it would be quite in keeping with everything else that had happened if just as Mr. Piper were leaving, a formal farewell on his lips and everything straightened out to everyone's conspiratorial or generously befooled satisfaction, Ted should stagger into the room like the galvanized corpse of a Pharoah wrapped in towels instead of mummy-cloth and everything from revolver-shots to a baring of inmost heart-histories would have to be gone through with again.
So when Oliver heard the telephone ring again he knew it was too good to be true, and, even when Mr. Piper started to answer it, was struck chilly with a hopeless fear that it might be police. But Fate had obviously got a trifle bored of her sport with them, or very possibly tired out by the intricacy of her previous combinations—for it was only the taxi after all and Mr. Piper was at the door.
“No use saying good-by to you now, is there, Oliver?” he said quietly, but held out his hand nevertheless.
“Well, good-by, Rose,” as he scrupulously shook hands with Mrs. Severance.
“Good-by, Sargent,” and then the door he had had such difficulty in opening two hours before had shut behind him and Oliver and Mrs. Severance were left looking at each other.
“Well,” said Mrs. Severance with a small gasp.
“Well,” said Oliver. “Well, well!”
“Excuse me,” said Oliver, and he walked over to the table and poured himself what he thought as he looked at it was very like the father and mother of all drinks.
“You might—do something like that for me—” said Mrs. Severance helplessly. “If you did—I think—I might be able to think—oh,well!”
“Well,” repeated Oliver like a toast as he tipped the bottle and the drink which he poured for Mrs. Severance was so like unto his drink that it would have taken a fine millimeter-gauge to measure the difference between them.
Mrs. Severance went back to her chair and Oliver sank into the chair that had been previously occupied by Mr. Piper. As he stretched back luxuriously something small and hard and bulging made him aware of itself in his pocket. “Oh Lord, I forgot I still had that gun of Mr. Piper's!” said Oliver inconsequentially.
“Have you?” said Mrs. Severance. The fact did not seem to strike her as being of any particular importance. They both drank long and frankly and thirstily, as if they were drinking well-water after having just come in from a hot mountain trail. And again, and for a considerable time, neither spoke.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Severance finally, with a blur of delicate scorn, “I suppose our friend Mr. Billett—got away safely?”
Her words brought up a picture of Ted to Oliver,—Ted netted like a fish out there on the fire-escape, swaddled up like a great papoose in all the towels and dish-cloths Oliver had been able to find. The release was too sudden, too great—the laughter came—the extreme laughter—the laughter like a giant. He swayed in his chair, choking and beating his knees and making strange lion-like sounds.
“Ted,” he gasped. “Ted! Oh, no, Mrs. Severance, Ted didn't get away! He didn't get away at all—Ted didn't! He didn't because you see hecouldn't. He's out on the fire-escape now—oh, wait till you see him, oh Ted, oh Glory, oh what a night, what a night, what a night!”