The Brass Bowl/Chapter 3
III
"HANDSOME DAN"
Standing in the middle of the road, watching the dust cloud that trailed the fast disappearing motorcar, Mr. Maitland cut a figure sufficiently forlorn and disconsolate to have distilled pity from the least sympathetic heart.
His hands were thrust stiffly at full arm's length into his trousers pockets: a rumpled silk hat was set awry on the back of his head; his shirt bosom was sadly crumpled; above the knees, to a casual glance, he presented the appearance of a man carefully attired in evening dress; below, his legs were sodden and muddied, his shoes of patent-leather, twin wrecks. Alas for jauntiness and elegance, alack for ease and aplomb!
"Tricked," observed Maitland casually, and protruded his lower lip, thus adding to the length of a countenance naturally long. "Outwitted by a chit of a girl! Dammit!"
But this was crude melodrama. Realizing which, he strove to smile: a sorry failure.
"'Handsome Dan,'" quoted he; and cocking his head to one side eyed the road inquiringly. "Where in thunder d'you suppose she got hold of that name?"
Bestowed upon him in callow college days, it had stuck burr-like for many a weary year. Of late, however, its use had lapsed among his acquaintances; he had begun to congratulate himself upon having lived it down. And now it was resurrected, flung at him in sincerest mockery by a woman whom, to his knowledge, he had never before laid eyes upon. Odious appellation, hateful invention of an ingenious enemy!
"'Handsome Dan!' She must have known me all the time—all the time I was making an exhibition of myself. … 'Wentworth'? I know no one of that name. Who the dickens can she be?"
If it had not been contrary to his code of ethics, he would gladly have raved, gnashed his teeth, footed the dance of rage with his shadow. Indeed, his restraint was admirable, the circumstances considered. He did nothing whatever but stand still for a matter of five minutes, vainly racking his memory for a clue to the identity of "Miss Wentworth."
At length he gave it up in despair and abstractedly felt for his watch-fob. Which wasn't there. Neither, investigation developed, was the watch. At which crowning stroke of misfortune,—the timepiece must have slipped from his pocket into the water while he was tinkering with that infamous carbureter,—Maitland turned eloquently red in the face.
"The price," he meditated aloud, with an effort to resume his pose, "is a high one to pay for a wave of a grey glove and the echo of a pretty laugh."
With which final fling at Fortune he set off again for Maitland Manor, trudging heavily but at a round pace through the dust that soon settled upon the damp cloth of his trousers legs and completed their ruination. But Maitland was beyond being disturbed by such trifles. A wounded vanity engaged his solicitude to the exclusion of all other interests.
At the end of forty-five minutes he had covered the remaining distance between Greenfields station and Maitland Manor. For five minutes more he strode wearily over the side-path by the box hedge which set aside his ancestral acres from the public highway. At length, with an exclamation, he paused at the first opening in the living barrier: a wide entrance from which a blue-stone carriage drive wound away to the house, invisible in the waning light, situate in the shelter of the grove of trees that studded the lawn.
"Gasoline! Brrr!" said Maitland, shuddering and shivering with the combination of a nauseous odor and the night's coolness—the latter by now making itself as unpleasantly prominent as the former.
Though he hated the smell with all his heart, manfully inconsistent he raised his head, sniffing the air for further evidence; and got his reward in a sickening gust.
"Tank leaked," he commented with brevity. "Quart of the stuff must have trickled out right here. Ugh! If it goes on at this rate, there'll be another breakdown before she gets home." And, "Serve her right, too!" he growled, vindictive.
But for all his indignation he acknowledged a sneaking wish that he might be at hand again, in such event, a second time to give gratuitous service to his grey lady.
Analyzing this frame of mind (not without surprise and some disdain of him who weakly entertained it) he crossed the drive and struck in over the lawn, shaping his course direct for the front entrance of the house.
By dead reckoning the hour was two, or something later; and a chill was stealing in upon the land, wafted gently southward from Long Island Sound. All the world beside himself seemed to slumber, breathless, insensate. Wraith-like, grey shreds of mist drifted between the serried boles of trees, or, rising, veiled the moon's wan and pallid face, that now was low upon the horizon. In silent rivalry long and velvet-black shadows skulked across the ample breadths of dew-drenched grass. Somewhere a bird stirred on its unseen perch, chirping sleepily; and in the rapt silence the inconsiderable interruption broke with startling stress.
In time,—not long,—the house lifted into view: a squat, rambling block of home-grown architecture with little to recommend it save its keen associations and its comfort. At the edge of the woods the lord and master paused indefinitely, with little purpose, surveying idly the pale, columned façade, and wondering whether or not his entrance at that ungodly hour would rouse the staff of house servants. If it did not—he contemplated with mild amusement the prospect of their surprise when, morning come, they should find the owner in occupation.
"Bannerman was right," he conceded; "any"
The syllables died upon his lips; his gaze became fixed; his heart thumped wildly for an instant, then rested still; and instinctively he held his breath, tip-toeing to the edge of the veranda the better to command a view of the library windows.
These opened from ceiling to floor and should by rights have presented to his vision a blank expanse of dark glass. But, oddly enough, even while thinking of his lawyer's warning, he had fancied. … "Ah!" said Maitland softly.
A disk of white light, perhaps a foot or eighteen inches in diameter, had flitted swiftly across the glass and vanished.
"Ah, ah! The devil, the devil!" murmured the young man unconsciously.
The light appeared again, dancing athwart the inner wall of the room, and was lost as abruptly as before. On impulse Maitland buttoned his top-coat across his chest, turning up the collar to hide his linen, darted stealthily a yard or two to one side, and with one noiseless bound reached the floor of the veranda. A breath later he stood by the front door, where, at first glance, he discovered the means of entrance used by the midnight marauder; the doors stood ajar, a black interval showing between them.
So that, then, was the way! Cautiously Maitland put a hand upon the knob and pushed.
A sharp, penetrating squeak brought him to an abrupt standstill, heart hammering shamefully again. Gathering himself to spring, if need be, he crept back toward the library windows, and reconnoitering cautiously determined the fact that the bolts had just been withdrawn on the inside of one window frame, which was swinging wide.
"It's a wise crook that provides his own quick exit," considered Maitland.
The sagacious one was not, apparently, leaving at that moment. On the contrary, having made all things ready for a hurried flight upon the first alarm, the intruder turned back, as was clearly indicated by the motion of the light within. The clink of steel touching steel became audible; and Maitland nodded. Bannerman was indeed justified; at that very moment the safe was being attacked.
Maitland returned noiselessly to the door. His mouth had settled into a hard, unyielding, thin line; and a dangerous light flickered in his eyes. Temporarily the idler had stepped aside, giving place to the real man that was Maitland—the man ready to fight for his own, naked hands against firearms, if it need be. True, he had but to step into the gun-room to find weapons in plenty; but these must be then loaded to be of service, and precious moments wasted in the process—moments in which the burglar might gain access to and make off with his booty.
Maitland had no notion whatever of permitting anything of the sort to occur. He counted upon taking his enemy unawares, difficult as he believed such a feat would be, in the case of a professional cracksman.
Down the hallway he groped his way to the library door, his fingers at length encountering its panels; it was closed, doubtless secured upon the inside; the slightest movement of the handle was calculated to alarm the housebreaker. Maitland paused, deliberating another and better plan, having in mind a short passageway connecting library and smoking-room. In the library itself a heavy tapestry curtained its opening, while an equally heavy portiere took the place of a door at the other end. In the natural order of things a burglar would overlook this.
Inch by inch the young man edged into the smoking-room, the door to which providentially stood unclosed. Once within, it was but a moment's work to feel his way to the velvet folds and draw them aside, fortunately without rattling the brass rings from which the curtain depended. And then Maitland was in the passage, acutely on the alert, recognizing from the continued click of metal that his antagonist-to-be was still at his difficult task. Inch by inch—there was the tapestry! Very gently the householder pushed it aside.
An insidious aroma of scorching varnish (the dark lantern) penetrated the passage while he stood on its threshold, feeling for the electric-light switch. Unhappily he missed this at the first cast, and—heard from within a quick, deep hiss of breath. Something had put the burglar on guard.
Another instant wasted, and it would be too late. The young man had to chance it. And he did, without further hesitation stepping boldly into the danger-zone, at the same time making one final, desperate pass at the spot where the switch should have been—and missing it. On the instant there came a click of a different caliber from those that had preceded it. A revolver had been cocked, somewhere there in the blank darkness.
Maitland knew enough not to move. In another respect the warning came too late; his fingers had found the switch at last, and automatically had turned it.
The glare was blinding, momentarily; but the flash and report for which Maitland waited did not come. When his eyes had adjusted themselves to the suddenly altered conditions, he saw, directly before him and some six feet distant, a woman's slight figure, dark cloaked, resolute upon its two feet, head framed in veiling, features effectually disguised in a motor mask whose round, staring goggles shone blankly in the warm white light.
On her part, she seemed to recognize him instantaneously. On his. … It may as well be admitted that Maitland's wits were gone wool-gathering, temporarily at least: a state of mind not unpardonable when it is taken into consideration that he was called upon to grapple with and simultaneously to assimilate three momentous facts. For the first time in his life he found himself nose to nose with a revolver, and that one of able bodied and respect-compelling proportions. For the first time in his life, again, he was under necessity of dealing with a housebreaker. But most stupefying of all he found the fact that this housebreaker, this armed midnight marauder, was a woman! And so it was not altogether fearlessness that made him to all intents and purposes ignore the weapon; it is nothing to his credit for courage if his eyes struck past the black and deadly mouth of the revolver and looked only into the blank and expressionless eyes of the wind-mask; it was not lack of respect for his skin's integrity, but the sheer, tremendous wonder of it all, that rendered him oblivious to the eternity that lay the other side of a slender, trembling finger-tip.
And so he stared, agape, until presently the weapon wavered and was lowered and the woman's voice, touched with irony, brought him to his senses.
"Oh," she remarked coolly, "it's only you."
Thunderstruck, he was able no more than to parrot the pronoun: "You—you!"
"Were you expecting to meet any one else, here, to-night?" she inquired in suavest mockery.
He lifted his shoulders helplessly, and tried to school his tongue to coherence. "I confess. … Well, certainly I didn't count on finding you here, Miss Wentworth. And the black cloak, you know"
"Reversible, of course: grey inside, as you see—Handsome Dan!" The girl laughed quietly, drawing aside an edge of the garment to reveal its inner face of silken grey and the fluted ruffles of the grey skirt underneath.
He nodded appreciation of the device, his mind now busy with speculations as to what he should do with the girl, now that he had caught her. At the same time he was vaguely vexed by her persistent repetition of the obsolescent nickname.
"Handsome Dan," he iterated all but mechanically. "Why do you call me that, please? Have we met before? I could swear, never before this night!"
"But you are altogether too modest," she laughed. "Not that it's a bad trait in the character of a professional. … But really! it seems a bit incredible that any one so widely advertised as Handsome Dan Anisty should feel surprise at being recognized. Why, your portrait and biography have commanded space in every yellow journal in America recently!"
And, dropping the revolver into a pocket in her cloak, "I was afraid you might be a servant—or even Maitland," she diverted the subject, with a nod.
"But—but if you recognized me as Anisty, back there by the ford, didn't you suspect I'd drop in on you"
"Why, of course! Didn't you all but tell me that you were coming here?"
"But"
"I thought perhaps I might get through before you came, Mr. Anisty; but I knew all the time that, even if you did manage to surprise me—er—on the job, you wouldn't call in the police." She laughed confidently, and—oddly enough—at the same time nervously. "You are certainly a very bold man, and as surely a very careless one, to run around the way you do without so much as troubling to grow a beard or a mustache, after your picture has been published broadcast."
Did he catch a gleam of admiration in the eyes behind the goggles?
"Now, if ever they get hold of my portrait and print it. … Well!" sighed the girl wickedly, lifting slim, bare fingers in affected concern to the mass of ruddy hair, "in that event I suppose I shall have to become a natural blonde!"
Her humor, her splendid fearlessness, the lightness of her tone, combined with the half-laughing, half-serious look that she swept up at him, to ease the tension of his emotions. For the first time since entering the room, he smiled; then in silence for a time regarded her steadfastly, thinking.
So he resembled this burglar, Anisty, strongly enough to be mistaken for him—eh? Plainly enough the girl believed him to be Anisty. … Well, and why not? Why shouldn't he be Anisty for the time being, if it suited his purpose so to masquerade?
It might possibly suit his purpose. He thought his position one uncommonly difficult. As Maitland, he had on his hands a female thief, a hardened character, a common malefactor (strange that he got so little relish of the terms!), caught red-handed; as Maitland, his duty was to hand her over to the law, to be dealt with as—what she was. Yet, even while these considerations were urging themselves upon him, he knew his eyes appraised her with open admiration and interest. She stood before him, slight, delicate, pretty, appealing in her ingenuous candor; and at his mercy. How could he bring himself to deal with her as he might with—well, Anisty himself? She was a woman, he a gentle man.
As Anisty, however,—if he chose to assume that expert's identity for the nonce,—he would be placed at once on a plane of equality with the girl; from a fellow of her craft she could hardly refuse attentions. As Anisty, he would put himself in a position to earn her friendship, to gain—perhaps—her confidence, to learn something of her necessities, to aid and protect her from the consequences of her misdeeds; possibly—to sum up—to divert her footsteps to the paths of a calling less hazardous and more honorable.
Worthy ambition: to reform a burglar! Maitland regained something of his lost self-esteem, applauding himself for entertaining a motive so laudable. And he chose his course, for better or worse, in these few seconds. Thereby proving his incontestable title to the name and repute of Mad Maitland.
His face lightened; his manner changed; he assumed with avidity the rôle for which she had cast him and which he stood so ready to accept and act.
"Well and good," he conceded with an air. "I suppose I may as well own up"
"Oh, I know you," she assured him, with a little, confident shake of her head. "There's no deceiving me. But," and her smile became rueful, "if only you'd waited ten minutes more! Of course I recognized you from the first—down there by the river; and knew very well what was your—lay; you gave yourself away completely by mentioning the distance from the river to the Manor. And I did so want to get ahead of you on this job! What a feather in one's cap to have forestalled Dan Anisty! … But hadn't you better be a little careful with those lights? You seem to forget that there are servants in the house. Really, you know, I find you most romantically audacious, Mr. Anisty—quite in keeping with your reputation."
"You overwhelm me," he murmured. "Believe me, I have little conceit in my fame, such as it is." And, crossing to the windows, he loosed the heavy velvet hangings and let them fall together, drawing their edges close so that no ray of light might escape.
She watched him with interest. "You seem well acquainted here."
"Of course. Any man of imagination is at pains to study every house he enters. I have a map of the premises—house and grounds—here." He indicated his forehead with a long forefinger.
"Quite right, too—and worth one's while. If rumor is to be believed, you have ordinarily more than your labor for your pains. You have taught me something already. … Ah, well!" she sighed, "I suppose I may as well acknowledge my inferiority—as neophyte to hierophant. Master!" She courtesied low. "I beg you proceed and let thy cheela profit through observation!" And a small white hand gestured significantly toward the collection of burglar's tools,—drills and chisels, skeleton keys, putty, and all,—neatly displayed upon the rug before the massive safe.
"You mean that you wish me to crack this safe for you?" he inquired, with inward consternation.
"Not for me. Disappointment I admit is mine; but not for the loss I sustain. In the presence of the master I am content to stand humbly to one side, as befits one of my lowly state in—in the ranks of our profession. I resign, I abdicate in your favor; claiming nothing by right of priority."
"You are too generous," he mumbled, confused by her thinly veiled ridicule.
"Not at all," she replied briskly. "I am entirely serious. My loss of to-day will prove my gain, to-morrow. I look for incalculable benefit through study of your methods. My own, I confess," with a contemptuous toss of her head toward the burglar's kit, "are clumsy, antiquated, out of date. … But then, I'm only an amateur."
"Oh, but a woman" he began to apologize on her behalf.
"Oh, but a woman!" she rapped out smartly. "I wish you to understand that this woman, at least, is no mean" And she hesitated.
"Thief?" he supplied crudely.
"Yes, thief! We're two of a feather, at that."
"True enough. … But you were first in the field; I fail to see why I should reap any reward for tardiness. The spoils must be yours."
It was a test: Maitland watched her keenly, fascinated by the subtlety of the game.
"But I refuse, Mr. Anisty—positively refuse to go to work while you stand aside and—and laugh."
Pride! He stared, openly amazed, at this bewilderingly feminine bundle of inconsistencies. With each facet of her character discovered to him, minute by minute, the study of her became to him the more engrossing. He drew nearer, eyes speculative.
"I will agree," he said slowly, "to crack the safe, but upon conditions."
She drew back imperceptibly, amused, but asserting her dignity. "Yes?" she led him on, though in no accent of encouragement.
"Back there, in the river," he drawled deliberately, forcing the pace, "I found you—beautiful."
She flushed, lip curling. "And, back there, in the river, I thought you—a gentleman!"
"Although a burglar?"
"A gentleman for all that!"
"I promise you I mean no harm," he prefaced. "But don't you see how I am putting myself in your power? Every moment you know me better, while I have not yet even looked into your face with the light full upon it. Honor among thieves, little woman!"
She chose to ignore the intimate note in his voice. "You're wasting time," she hinted crisply.
"I am aware of that fact. Permit me to remind you that you are helping me to waste it. I will not go ahead until I have seen your face. It is simply an ordinary precaution."
"Oh, if it's a matter of business"
"Self-preservation," he corrected with magnificent gravity.
She hesitated but a moment longer, then with a quick gesture removed her mask. Maitland's breath came fast as he bent forward, peering into her face; though he schooled his own features to an expression of intent and inoffensive studiousness, he feared the loud thumping of his heart would betray him. As he looked it became evident that the witchery of moonlight had not served to exaggerate the sensitive, the almost miniature, beauty of her. If anything, its charm was greater there in the full glare of the electric chandelier, as she faced him, giving him glance for glance, quite undismayed by the intentness of his scrutiny.
In the clear light her eyes shone lustrous, pools of tawny flame; her hair showed itself of a rich and luminous coppery hue, spun to immeasurable fineness; a faint color burned in her cheeks, but in contrast her forehead was as snow—the pure, white, close-grained skin that is the heritage of red-headed women the world over, and their chiefest charm as well; while her lips. …
As for her lips, the most coherent statement to be extracted from Mr. Maitland is to the effect that they were altogether desirable, from the very first.
The hauteur of her pose, the sympathy and laughter that lurked in her mouth, the manifest breeding in the delicate modeling of her nostrils, and the firm, straight arch of her nose, the astonishing allurement of her eyes, combined with their spirited womanliness: these, while they completed the conquest of the young man, abashed him. He found himself of a sudden endowed with a painful appreciation of his own imperfections, the littleness of his ego, the inherent coarseness of his masculine fiber, the poor futility of his ways, contrasted with her perfections. He felt as if rebuked for some unwarrantable presumption. … For he had looked into eyes that were windows of a soul; and the soul was that of a child, unsullied and immaculate.
You may smile; but as for Maitland, he deemed it no laughing matter. From that moment his perception was clear that, whatever she might claim to be, however damning the circumstances in which she appeared to him, there was no evil in her.
But what he did not know, and did not even guess, was that, from the same instant, his being was in bondage to her will. So Love comes, strangely masked.