May Eve; or, What You Must/Part 2
A STORY IN THREE PARTS—PART II.
CHAPTER V.
“IT'S new moon night,” he said, as they walked along the quiet suburban street; “it's one of my lucky nights. Some people, you know, have a lucky star. I have a lucky moon. From the new of the moon to the half of the moon, I always have extraordinarily good fortune. But from half moon on to full moon I am at my lowest ebb of luck. I'm positively the buffoon of events, the very footstool of the fates; time's fool, as it were.”
“Why, how very, very curious!” she burst out. “How extraordinary! Have you ever read George MacDonald's 'At the Back of the North Wind'?” she inquired swiftly.
“I was brought up on it.”
“Do you remember the story of the Princess Daylight?”
“Perfectly; it was my favorite.”
“I read that story when I was—oh, a little girl. I became very fond of it. As I grew older I used to play that I was the Princess Daylight, and I came to fancy that at the full of the moon”
“Oh, impossible,” he interrupted; “you're not going to tell me”
“On the contrary, I have always thought so.”
“Your good fortune comes with the full of the moon?”
“Always,” she insisted unswervingly. “From half moon to full.”
“We ought to form a luck association,” he said. “Between us, we'd capture all there is of it. We'd have—what is it you Americans make—a corner, is it?—yes, a corner in luck.”
“I'm not sure that's fair to the rest of the world,” she laughed; “but as luck will have it—our present uncornered luck—here we are.”
He waited outside until she saw Pepi.
“Have you ever noticed, Miss Wrexmere, how quickly time passes when you're happy?” he inquired of her, when she rejoined him.
“I think I always notice the obvious,” she frowned; “it's ungallant of you to give me credit for no intelligence.”
“Oh, but,” he said triumphantly, “I have theories that account for it.”
“Oh, well, I will listen to them,” she indulged him.
“Well, then, first you must realize the truth about Father Time. I am convinced that he's a hoary-headed hypocrite. I'm convinced that he's a liar and a thief. And I'll tell you why. When time hangs heavy on your hands, when you're bored and unhappy, when, in short, time's cheap, he'll give you full measure of it, he'll satiate you with it, he'll glut you with it. But let there enter into it, if you please, happiness in never so small a combination, what does he do? He tampers with his weights—I mean his time-measures—his timepieces. He doles time out to you in the smallest possible compass; he doesn't give you full measure. Oh, I know, because I've watched. When you're happy there are positively only twenty-five seconds to a minute, and not more than thirty minutes to an hour. And the inexplicable thing about it is that we are either such blind fools that we don't notice, or so fatuous that we don't care. And we never call him to account until it's too late, until, indeed, we're safely unhappy again—and who wants more time on his hands then? Oh, it's an outrage. I'm not going to be taken in on this occasion.” He pulled out his watch.
“Plaît-il?” she asked, mystified.
“I'm going to get up a strike,” he said. “I now and hereby declare myself opposed to all trusts, and especially the time trust. I offer myself”
“Oh, but—oh, but,” she tripped him cleverly, “didn't you just a moment ago try to tempt me into forming a corner in luck?”
“Oh, I've grown since then,” he asserted, “and I have, myself, suffered at the hands of the time trust; and, besides, there's no virtue in mere consistency. No, I continue to offer myself as a leader to those mortals—no, those immortals—now wallowing in the deepest depths of happiness, who are willing to arise in rebellion against Father Time, to demand their full allowance of minutes. Oh, that isn't all,” he went on heatedly. “I'll turn anarchist if it's necessary—we'll assassinate Father Time—we'll smash all his gage-clocks, watches, sun-dials, moon-dials, star-dials, everything. And when we've got all eternity under control, we'll divide it, socialist fashion, among the happy ones.” His hands fumbled with his watch.
“Still I don't understand,” she maintained, nonplused.
“I'm putting my watch back an hour,” he explained tranquilly, “to allow for cheating, to allow for leakage, to allow for waste.”
She laughed unrestrainedly. “And after you've got your rights—do you mind telling me the time?”
“To people ineffably happy it is at this instant a half-after eight,” he said jauntily. “Oh, but I don't trust you even now,” he apostrophized his slender flat timepiece; “and you're aged enough to be piously honest. And as an old servant, whose welfare has, for nearly a century, risen and fallen with the family fortunes, I'm weak enough to expect devotion from you. But, alas, if happy, put not your trust in watches,” he ended softly.
“And to less happy people it is then half-past nine,” she informed herself meditatively.
“Yes, poor slaves!” he admitted. “Do you happen to know,” he continued casually, “if we turn down here and cut through that inspired little road, and keep straight on, in the course of time—oh, hang time! I'm going to get away from it—in the course of space, let us say, we are morally certain to come out in Brookline?”
She considered. “I didn't happen to know, but my sense of direction reinforces your statement. It's a short-cut—then why don't we take it”
“There is only one objection,” he asserted gravely.
“And that?”
“We should have to walk.”
She smiled amusedly. “I think that's a recommendation,” she was generous enough to help him.
They turned down the “inspired little road.”
“I'm glad you liked 'The Land of Heart's Desire,'” she broke the silence, at length, her tones a little formal.
“Oh, let's not talk books,” he en-treated; “let's talk personalities.”
“Your conversation is full of hooks,” she complained, “and so obviously baited for a woman.”
“Are you going to marry Montfort?” he asked abruptly.
She pondered. “I wonder—I wonder if you're a newspaper man,” she said electrically.
There was for a second an ominous silence, and then he stopped and turned on her. “Good God!” he exclaimed suddenly; and, “Take that back,” he ordered peremptorily.
Silver-Rose made herself tall, and they looked at each other, fiery brown eyes warring on blue—blue eyes, like frozen wells, repelling the shafts of brown eyes—brown eyes growing hard and grim—blue eyes dropping finally protective white curtains before brown eyes. “I beg your pardon,” Silver-Rose said proudly at the end of this wordless duel.
“Are you going to marry him?” he demanded.
“No,” she threw at him curtly.
“I shall have to put my watch back another hour,” he apprised her softly, in the phrase of one Shakespeare, suiting the action to the word. The expression of his eyes was, in a trice, very different. In spite of herself, Silver-Rose laughed.
“Is there anywhere in your vicinity in Brookline,” he questioned in affable oblivion to what had gone before, “an old house belonging to a family by the name of Eveleth?”
“Indeed, there is just such a house,” she affirmed.
“I'm interested, for various reasons, in the house,” he said vaguely. “I think, after I leave you to-night”—here he stopped, sighed, and said parenthetically: “I shall have to put my watch forward a—no, I'll smash it.” Then he continued: “I shall hunt it up. You can give me the directions?”
“Easily,” she smiled up at him. “You walk through our place, back of the house, past the garden, into the Dimple, and through the orchard, then into the grove and over the stone wall. That brings you onto the Eveleth estate. If it isn't all grown up there, there's a tiny path that will take you a winding way to the house, and if nothing has been done to put the place in repair, and whether it has or not, I fancy, there's a certain window that will let you in—that is, if you want to explore it.”
“I do want to explore it,” he said humbly. “How does it happen that you know so much about it?”
“It was our favorite play-place when we were children, my sister Doris and my brother Beaufort and I. We've played there for hours and hours. I think the happiest hours that I have ever known have been spent in that old house.”
“An old house,” he mused; “it's the real, the only playground for a child. There ought to be legislation, providing one in every neighborhood. I played,” he went on diffidently, “in a deserted Italian palazzo.
“How exciting! It takes all the glory from my humble experiences.”
“Not at all, as you know,” he insisted; “tell me more about it.”
“We used to play in the big room at the top of the house. Dor and Beau were, at first, always father and mother, and I was their little girl. But one day I rebelled—I was always difficile, and I set up a ménage of my own.”
“And who was your husband?” he inquired earnestly.
“It's so ridiculous to talk about, but my house was a palace; and half the time I was married: my husband a dream-husband, my children dream-children. It sounds a bit like 'Peter Ibbetson,' doesn't it? I always called myself the Princess Daylight. The other half the time I was still under the fairy's enchantment, waiting for the prince to come to break my moon-bound destiny.”
“Oh,” he commented comprehendingly. “And what sort of a prince was he?” he asked.
“This is the childish part of it,” she laughed. “It happened that there was a hereditary owner of that old house—little Harry Eveleth—who must have been a few years older than I. His father had gone abroad a few years before we were born and married there. Harry was born abroad, and the father never returned. I used to play with Doris and Beau, that Harry Eveleth, or Prince Harry, or Prince Hal, as we used oftenest to call him—after Shakespeare—was coming to release me from the spell of the bad fairies. We talked so much of and to him that he became quite as real as any of us. For years he was a constant companion. To speak his name calls up at this moment quite as definite a picture to my mind as in those days.”
“How did he look, if it's not impertinent?”;
“Oh, we decided that he should be dark, of course, as I was blond—with black hair to correspond with my tow-head.”
“Tow-head,” he interrupted mutteringly. “I'll call you out.”
“His hair hung in soft love-locks about a heart-shaped face. He had dark-brown eyes—the eyes of a prince cut off by wicked enchantments from his kingdom. He was to wear gray velvet, and a hat with a long floating white plume. We always called him the 'Sad Little Prince,' after a story Doris had read in the St. Nicholas.”
“Must've read it in the St. Nicholas, too,” he averred surprisedly. “My father was an American, you know,” he reminded her. “He would have compelled me to read the St. Nicholas each month if I had not cared, but it happened that I cared enormously.”
“It was such a dear sort of a play-life,” Silver-Rose went on musingly. “Doris wrote a poem later on my little dream-husband. It came out in 'The Wind on the Harp.' People are always asking her what it means, but Doris won't tell.”
“Yes, I've read it,” he admitted, “and I've wondered with the rest. I also will not tell. And how many years did you play there?”
“Oh, three or four. I suppose we'd be playing there now—I'm very sure I should—but during one of the years that we went abroad the Eveleth house became the rendezvous for tramps. It wasn't so built up about there in those days, and it was nicely situated for that sort of thing, they said. Just before we came home a tramps' roost was broken up in it. Father would not permit us to go into the house again. He made us solemnly promise never to do so.”
“What a pity!”
“Wasn't it, just? But you can understand. There had been recently a more disgraceful element. Indeed, we had a sensation out of it, a nine-days' wonder, the papers called it. An escaped criminal, Boston Harry, had been caught there. I think the Eveleths must have heard in some way. At any rate, afterward the house was more carefully boarded up. And, oh, if you're still interested, this same Boston Harry, or Snappy Harry, as they call him now, has just escaped from Sing Sing, the papers say. There's a reward out for him.”
“Yes, I've been reading about it,” he said briefly. “I think I ought to tell you”—he turned swiftly to a change of subject—“perhaps I ought to have told you before, I know Harry Eveleth very well. We went to school together in England.”
“Did you, indeed?” Silver-Rose marveled. “There's a coincidence for you. But, after all, it's not much of one,” she said, sighing. “All my disillusions have been, thus far, in the way of discovering how small the world is. There is really not space enough, since the finding of steam and electricity, for there to be any privacy. I don't wonder that the spirit of romance has betaken itself to other planets. What sort of a man is Hal—Mr. Eveleth?”
“Oh, it's hard for a man to describe another. He's companionable enough—at least I find him so—and congenial, after a fashion. I fancy that we've thrashed out together every idea that we own in common. I suppose, in another way, that accounts for what you charitably describe as my idiomatic English. On the whole, we hit it off pretty well together. I'm not sure but that I prefer his company to any other's.”
“Oh!” Silver-Rose's tone was a little flat from disappointment. “And what does he look like?” she queried.
“He's dark. Your imagined portrait was correct there. And—and—oh, he looks like other men, I suppose.” Her companion stumbled obviously. “He wanted me,” he went on more smoothly, “if I pushed on to Boston, to visit the old place. He's rather curious to know what it's like. He has a fancy he'll come back some time and live there. But I confess I've done nothing about it until now. Oh, yes, I had nearly forgotten that he charged me to be sure and hunt in an upper room for a mysterious secret chamber. His father had told him about it.”
Silver-Rose laughed joyously. “Oh, I know just where that is,” she exclaimed. “We discovered it once when we were playing, Beau and Dor and I. We made a solemn vow that day never to disclose our find to anybody. Oh, we've had such fun with it. Many and many a time we've hidden little Prince Hal there, away from the enemies who were continually pursuing him.”
“You can tell me where it is? Harry's directions were a little hazy.”
“I can show you—I'll explore the house with you. You never could find it without assistance—oh, never in the world; it's over on the right wall as you enter, and the spring's in a knot in the wood.”
“Oh, you are heavenly good,” he said ardently. “I don't dare to thank you for each new paradise that you open up to me. I'm so afraid it will bring you to a realization of all your kindnesses, and you'll shut some of the doors. I'm simply overwhelmed. Didn't I tell you new-moon night brought me luck?”
But she did not shut any doors. Instead, “Look at the stars,” she said dreamily; “what hosts in the pathetic bit of sky over this little mean street! Oh, I love starlight better even than I love moonlight. There's something compelling about the moon; it's like a prima donna. And the stars are her chorus. If you study them carefully, you will always find among them newer and fresher beauties. Oh, there's an 'infinite variety' about them. I used to feel, when I was a little girl, that on the other side of the sky there was a host of aerial creatures, winged and armored. I pictured them standing, silent and erect, with their lances poised against the sky, and all aimed at the earth. And I thought that the stars were their silver lance-tips, pricking through.” She paused a moment. “I hope you are looking at them,” she said.
“No,” he admitted softly. “I'm not looking at them.”
CHAPTER V.
“What shall I call you?” she said abruptly. “I demand a name.”
“It must be Monsieur l'Inconnu for awhile, I fear,” he said a little forlornly.
“No,” she said, shaking her head; “not Monsieur l'Inconnu. Let's return to childhood—I'm going back there as fast as I can—and when I get to the Eveleth house I shall be inescapably there. You shall be the king of the fairies.”
“And you—what will you be?”
“All the afternoon,” she averred, “I have been a newly married bride, and, indeed, it was as a bride, and the bride of a dream-husband, that I played in the Eveleth house.”
But he could not seem to fall in with her suggestion. He was meditating darkly. “Oh, those tableaux!” he said at length. “I don't seem to care for you in the character of a newly married bride—unless you'll let me be Harry Eveleth.”
But she shook her head. “No,” she denied him almost fiercely; “'that would be wickedness.'”
“'That would be sacrilege,'” his quotation supplementing hers immediately. “Apropos, do you know that it is May Eve?” he asked idly.
“So it is, and last year—just a year ago to-night—I was playing Maire in 'The Land of Heart's Desire.'”
His face lighted up suddenly. “So you were,” he agreed. “Yes, you shall be a newly married bride to-night,” he conceded, “if I can be king of the fairies,” he bargained enigmatically.
“Very well, that's settled,” she said steadily. “Remember, we must live up to our parts—you to your kingship, I to my brideship.”
“I shall try my best to live up to my fairyship, you may be sure of that,” he agreed smilingly.
“Oh, I see where we are now,” she exclaimed suddenly, as they turned a corner; “things have not once had a familiar look.”
“Yes,” he said briefly, “you're nearly home.”
She stopped in front of a little low back window.
“We'll take the short-cut through our place to the Eveleth house. I suppose I ought to hurry—we're giving a dance to-night, you know.”
“I had forgotten that.” He brooded an instant. “I ought to release you from your promise to go over the old house with me,” he said tentatively.
“But I won't be released,” Silver-Rose told him. “People won't even begin to come before eleven, and there are plenty of cousins to help mama, and mama's used to my whims. I'm called eccentric, you know,” she informed. him smilingly.
“Tell me,” the young man said, dropping his voice softly, “you said a moment ago that everything had hitherto looked unfamiliar to you. Have you had, every moment, absolute trust in me—that I would bring you, unmolested, to home and safety '”
“I have had every moment absolute trust in you,” said Sylvia Rosamund Wrexmere.
They turned into the Wrexmere estate at the end farthest from the house. But in the distance they could see the latter, on a hill among the trees, a huge stone bulk, like a reservoir of molten gold, pouring from each window a torrent of thick, yellow light.
“We must be very quiet,” Silver-Rose whispered. “I don't care to be seen. It is unlikely, however, that anybody will be about.”
Her companion followed her noiselessly. For full fifteen minutes they walked through the charming mazes of an estate where, in the main, nature had been permitted to run wild, only coaxed, here and there, to a greater cleanliness, to a more decent seemliness.
“This is the Dimple,” Silver-Rose whisperingly apprised him. “Here's where we always coasted winters. Doris named it; there's a poem about it in 'The Wind on the Harp.'”
It was a soft symmetrical hollow, scooped out of the side of a hill. They walked down into it and up on the other side—to plunge, beyond, into a grove of firs. Here there was a carpet of pine-needles. Their feet sank into it.
“Ah, here's the wall,” Silver-Rose said relievedly. “And here's the place we went through. I was almost afraid I had forgotten the path. It's ages since I've been here.”
Her companion jumped over the wall and assisted her. Then she took the lead again through a little path that had become a mere thread, unwound between parallel rows of bursting shoots,
“Oh,” she said, “smell the sweet things growing here.” She stopped every other instant to breathe in the spring savors. “There used to be,” she went on, “the most wonderful garden here: flowers and flowers and flowers, and in such delicious old-time combinations; every flower that was royal, but only those that were old and quaint. Roses, and such roses! Tiger-lilies, millions of them. Flower-de-luce jostling sunflowers, poppies elbowing marigolds, and hollyhocks, princess feather, cardinal-flower nasturtiums—a perfect flood of them. Not a small flower or a humble flower, and all growing in such a tumult. You can fancy how it must have taken hold of us three children. Our gardens are all of the parterre type—you know what I mean—the deadly product of the taste of hired gardeners. There's the little grape-arbor over there,” she said, after another pause; “it's beside a pond that's a perfect love of a pond: tiny, not deep. Once there were lilies; we used to wade in and get them. Ah, now you can see the house.”
It was a big, square structure. In the abundant starlight it could be seen that the blinds were all closed. On the side toward them was a long pillared piazza; it was conjecturable that another, exactly like it, flanked the other end. Silver-Rose made very swiftly now for the back of the house. She stopped in front of a little, low, back window; the blinds were down there, also.
“I have faith,” she whispered, “that we shall get in here.”
“I also have that faith,” he echoed quietly. He too spoke softly, perhaps because their talk had been for so many minutes in whispers, perhaps because the opulent, star-decked night and their mysterious errand seemed to demand it.
He pulled the blinds open. He tugged at the lower sash of the window, but it went up as smoothly as if Doris and Beaufort and Silver-Rose had that very afternoon played there.
“Have you matches?” she asked.
“A pocket full,” he said.
“Don't light one until I give you permission,” she commanded.
“Oh, no,” he agreed; “this is your expedition.” He leaped lightly in through the window. Then he gave her his hand.
They stood moveless for a second inside, looking out the window.
“Now you may light a match, if you will,” she said.
There was a crisp, snapping sound, then a flash. A jagged triangle of light blazed through the darkness, steadied, grew symmetrical. They were standing in a small, square room, with only one window and a door.
“Ah,” Silver-Rose said relievedly, “it's just as I pictured it. I do remember it aright.” She paused for a second, and in the brief moment before the flame died a strange change made sudden vivid progress across her face.
“What is it?” he asked alarmedly. “Would you rather not go on?”
“Oh, no,” she said stoutly. “I'm not frightened, although I might well be. You see, I'm only ten years old now. Only—only”
“Only,” he helped her.
“Only,” she went on, “I had a sudden intuiton of impending evil. And, you see, I'm old-fashioned, I trust my intuitions.”
“And I trust them, too,” he said gently. “Let's give up this wild idea. I'll take you home. Heaven bless us and save us, that's where you belong! If you only knew the infernal tattoo my conscience is keeping up.”
“But I want to go,” she persisted. “I shan't desert you now.”
“If I could only leave you outside while I do my exploring—it's such a poky place to take a woman into. No, I insist upon taking you home.”
“And I,” she maintained obstinately, “on accompanying you. You mustn't refuse me. Remember, I'm only ten.”
“Very well,” he acquiesced. “Of course it makes a great difference your going.”
“And what's there to be afraid of?” she questioned clearly. “What could we possibly meet but ghosts, the ghosts of Dor and Beau and Prince Hal and the Princess Daylight?”
“I'd love to meet that last little ghost,” he interrupted.
“Or perhaps the ghost of Boston Harry,” she went on unheedingly. “Listen, listen, just listen to the silence. Isn't that strange, to be listening to silence? But there is no silence like that of a deserted old house.”
He listened with her. The silence was that of the grave.
“No, it's all nonsense being afraid,” she went on, reassuring herself. “There are no birds in any last-year's nest. Come.”
She took command of herself and of the expedition.
“Now, I want, first, to go to the big room up-stairs—and then we'll explore the house by degrees. Give me two matches—no, only two. We'll need all you've got later.” She lighted one that he handed to her.
They went, in almost total darkness, up a narrow flight of back stairs; then through a back hall to a wider hall and up another flight of stairs. Here Silver-Rose lighted her second match. They went up one more flight, narrower again. They paused at the top, the match went out. Silver-Rose walked directly down the narrow hall there. She halted at its end, up against what looked like a blank wall.
“Now a match,” she said.
He fumbled in his pocket, and she heard the crack of a match. Simultaneously she pushed forward, and a door opened noiselessly inward. They stood on the threshold a demi-instant, paralyzed.
And then suddenly they were both pushed violently into the room from behind, and in a flash the door back of them closed and locked.
They found themselves standing in a big, wide, garret room. It was lighted, but only dimly, by a single kerosene lamp. The floor and the walls and the slanting roof were all unfinished. The blinds of the four windows were closed; the windows also were closed. There were heavy stuffs hanging in front of them all, squares of matting, napless rectangles of old carpet, and at one an old shawl. Rags of all kinds were stuffed between the window-sashes and cases. There were a few broken chairs about and a table. On the latter and on the floor were piles of dirty dishes, tin plates, and cans, broken crockery, rusty kitchen utensils. A huge heap of rubbish filled one corner. In a line at one side were what undoubtedly passed for beds: mere heaps of straw and rags and old papers. On one lay a thick bundle of clothes.
There were, in the room, aside from the man who had precipitated them into it, five men in the room. Four of these were standing. The fifth was seated in a tumble-down, pivoting office-chair. He had swung about at their entrance, had given them one hasty glance, had swung back. He had not looked again. Silver-Rose caught, during the progress of his revolution, an instant's sight of a peaked, dark face, sickly and sinister-looking.
“I beg your pardon, gentlemen. I am not Boston Harry.”
The other four men gaped at them for an instant, apparently paralyzed by their intrusion. They looked like no people that Silver-Rose had ever before seen. She had even no type-faces, among her remembered observations, by which she could judge these variations. They were like a collection of gargoyles or Japanese masks—not at all human, and more subtly horrible, somehow, because, after all, they were not oriental, they were occidental. They recalled to her, strangely enough, faces from Hogarth and Doré.
One of them, a collarless, half-clad creature, seemed not quite normal; hardly human, in fact. His underjaw, in his surprise, had dropped away from an overhanging bush of mustache, showing the jagged line of a scarred mouth. He squinted at them with eyes whose lids seemed pressed together by an overhanging, protuberant forehead. His look, as it turned in their direction, shifted and crossed. Another, with a head as round as a ball, with a face like a pudding—pimpled and pockmarked—stared at them, as if unseeingly, with little, blue, pig's eyes. The third was stout and hairy; his head one cascade of hair and beard. One eye was permanently closed, and his red, glistening lips were parted, displaying, thereby, a few teeth, curved and yellow. He fixed his sound eye examiningly upon them. The fourth man was a negro, middle-aged, with a grizzled fuzz of hair. His skin was pulled as tight as a drum over a squat skull, his jaw was pushed forward like a bulldog's, and his eyes were like hard bits of round glass set in his face.
None of them looked at Silver-Rose; it gave her a curious feeling, for the moment, the way they ignored her; she had never experienced anything quite like it—from men. It was on her companion that their attention focused, and, as they looked, gradually the light of recognition dawned in their faces. “Why, it's Boston Harry,” one of them shouted huskily, and three of their number threw themselves on him, shaking his hands, questioning him, informing him of strange facts, all in a clamor and a jargon that she could not understand. But whatever might have been the purport of their words, the chances are that she would not have understood. The title that they had given him, “Boston Harry,” had numbed her almost into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER VI.
But Silver-Rose's companion was not responding to the overtures of the men. “I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” he said, when he could make himself understood, “you are mistaken—I am not Boston Harry.”
They laughed good-naturedly at this. “Say, it's all right, Harry,” the squint-eyed individual assured him; “we're all pals here, and you're as safe as if you were in your mother's arms.”
“But—but—gentlemen, I don't doubt that for a moment,” Monsieur l'Inconnu apprised them; “only it happens that I'm not Boston Harry. I must ask you to release me and my companion,” he went on courteously; “we have a pressing engagement.” He turned a little toward the door. The man who had pushed them through it, who was possessed of its key, who had stood, all along, not far off, watching keenly, now slipped away.
He was a slim, bent fellow, younger than the rest, hollow-cheeked, a look as of perpetual alarm in his wide-opened, shallow eyes.
The men laughed enjoyingly. “That's right, all right,” one of them said, “the engagement's no pipe-dream, and the town's full of fly-cops that'll help you to keep it—if you only let them see you first.”
“Will you kindly unlock the door?” Monsieur l'Inconnu persisted,
The little doorkeeper frowned. “Well, I don't know what your game is, Harry, but there's something up, and we ain't on. Still, I don't know as we pull anything by holding you here. You can keep your tongue between your lips, I suppose.” He fumbled in his pocket.
“I give you my word of honor,” Monsieur l'Inconnu assured them earnestly; “your hiding-place is safe with me.”
The doorkeeper had found the key; he started for the door.
“Wait a moment,” the fifth man suddenly called in a strident voice of authority. “Don't open that door yet.” He swung his chair about toward them.
Silver-Rose examined the fifth man. He was seated slouched back in his chair, his legs stretched out in front, a thin, ungainly figure that looked as if it might be tall when it stood. His narrow head was close-cropped. His face was lean and pale, with a peculiar. pallor that she had never before seen; it was not a healthy pallor, nor was it the pallor of illness. It was emphasized—and almost horribly so—by the purple shadow of a few days' beard. He had sneering coal-black eyes that seemed to narrow under heavy, level brows. There was a sinister effect given to his look by his chin, which protruded so Straight and long that the line from its tip to where the head joined the throat was abnormally disproportionate. There was not a curve in his face or figure, and he had long fingers, yellow and spatulate, those of one hand beating a continual restless tattoo on the back of the other.
“Well, Harry Pryor, what have you got to say for yourself?” he asked sneeringly.
Monsieur l'Inconnu stared at him. “I'm not Harry Pryor,” he said simply. “Come, come, gentlemen”
“Say, Cig,” the fifth man interrupted, turning to the little doorkeeper, “how'd these people manage to get in here, anyway?”
“They got in jess before me—while I was out,” Cig explained volubly. “I heard them the moment I got into the house. I followed them up-stairs, thinking they'd go into one of the rooms down-stairs. I thought I could cut by them and get here first; but I couldn't; they kept straight on. I don't know. what Harry's game is. He didn't appear to be on; the lady was doing all the talking. She was showing him the way. When they opened the door I just pushed them in; I thought it wouldn't do no harm to see what game we'd caught before we let them loose.”
“Very good idea, very good,. very good, indeed,” the fifth man commended him patronizingly. “What was you saying, Harry?” he turned affably to Monsieur l'Inconnu.
“For the third time, that I'm not Harry Pryor,” he said, and he spoke with an effort that showed he was holding himself in control. “Come, come, gentlemen, why persist in this error—or, at least, in keeping me here against my will? I must ask you to open the door immediately.”
The fifth man laughed a queer, cracked laugh. “You always were a slippery devil, Harry,” he said with an air of grim geniality; “you could always carry 'most anything off with your high and mighty airs. But it don't go now. I'm onto you, as the song goes. You're looking fine, Harry; fine as a fiddle, and ten years younger, as I am a living man; and, as usual”—his sneering gaze slanted to Silver-Rose—“there's a lady in the case. Oh, you're a sad dog, Harry, and always up to some trick or other. I suppose you ain't told the lady about that last little trip you made out here a few years ago. There was a lady with you then. There always seems to be a petticoat round whenever you're about. Let me see, she was a brunette, wasn't she? A little too stout for my taste, and too dark; I prefer blondes. As I remember, you and her condescended to spend the night here. Just think of that! They shared our 'umble lodgings. Only Harry was that particular, he wouldn't stay in the same room, and be sociable like the rest of us. No, he jess would have a room all to their little selves, down-stairs on the next floor. Now, I suppose you two was looking for some place to stay; why, we're just tickled to death to see you. We can accommodate you just as well as not.”
Monsieur l'Inconnu's eyes were blazing, but, again, with a visible effort, he managed to control himself. “When you have finished with these comments—the drift or the use of which I fail to catch—will you open that door?” he asked ominously.
“Open the door?” The other laughed again, noiselessly this time, but no more pleasantly. “Not jess yet, Harry, I ain't seen you, you know, since that little job, when you turned State's evidence, as the papers put it, and we parted, you to your happy home, me to prison.”
He threw himself, with all his strength, against the door.
There was, at this, an immediate stir of interest among the men who stood listening intently. They drew slowly into a compact little group and slyly they began to exchange looks. Occasionally they muttered comments.
Monsieur l'Inconnu stared steadily at the fifth man. The look in his eyes lost its threat, it, became bewildered, but only for an instant.
“This is all nonsense,” he burst out impatiently, after awhile; “you persist in calling me Harry Pryor. I'm not Harry Pryor. Now, as we can't agree on the matter, and as it's of no consequence, anyway, can't we agree to disagree? I can't stay here to argue all night. I have, as you see, a lady under my protection. I must take care of her. Now, again, and for the last time, I ask you to open the door.”
The fifth man repeated and prolonged his noiseless laugh. He brought the tips of his ten yellow fingers together, and, over the cage that their correlation made, he contemplated Monsieur l'Inconnu, nodding his head approvingly meantime. “You beat the Dutch, Harry,” he said; “you always did. No,” he went on smilingly, “we sha'n't open the door—not for the present, anyway. I've still got my little bone to pick with you. It'll take quite a spell. You might as well make up your mind that you've got to stay.”
“I don't mind staying,” Monsieur l'Inconnu replied to this, “if you insist on talking over with me what I know nothing about, and what may reveal to me the secrets of another man—that's your lookout, of course, not mine. But will you let me take the lady home first, if I promise that I'll come back; that will be, at the latest, in fifteen minutes?” he asked finally.
“I guess not, Harry, if it's all the same to you,” the fifth man said genially; “you've broken so many promises, it isn't surprising that I don't set much store by your word now, is it?”
“You can send one, two, as many as you please, of these men with me,” Monsieur l'Inconnu offered.
“That's handsome, Harry, I must say,” his tormentor commented, “but they've all got reasons why they don't want to go out on the street at present: the night air don't agree with them.”
Monsieur l'Inconnu was silent for a second. Then he turned and threw himself, with all his strength, against the door. He seized the knob and bore against it with the weight of his whole figure. A half-a-dozen times he did this. The men in the room did not stir, but they watched interestedly, and, through it all, they smiled.
“It's no use, Harry,” the fifth man said; “you can keep that up all night long if you want to, but you are only wasting your strength. You want to keep that,” he ended smoothly; “you'll need it all later.”
TO BE CONCLUDED.