The Girl in His House/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
ARMITAGE walked back to the hotel. The wind was bitter and there was a dash of rain in it. But he minded neither the wind nor the rain nor the long walk. There are times when the mind is so busy that physical weariness and discomfort are unnoticeable.
He was astounded and miserable and distressed. Not because he had fallen in love with Doris Athelstone. Propinquity made such a thing more or less inescapable. It was not that he had fallen in love with her; it was because he could fall in love with her. He doubted himself. He was miserable and unhappy because he did not believe that he was capable of loving deeply.
He had felt almost exactly the same as on that day Clare Wendell had become the sum of his existence. He had been telling himself for days that he hadn't loved Clare at all; when faced honestly he had loved her, only, as Bob said, he had got over it. There you were, the crux of it. What did getting over it signify? That he was not capable of sustained love? Supposing it was just the novelty of the situation in which he found himself? Supposing he told Doris he loved her, and they married, and afterward. . . .
And yet there was a difference between this new love and the old. There had been the pride of youth in the first affair; in this one only a deep and tender longing to shield and protect. It could not be the grand passion; his blood did not bound at the thought of Doris as it had at the thought of Clare. All he wanted was to hold Doris close in his arms. He did not have a perception of that former desire to go forth into the world and conquer something, to shout his joy at everybody.
Armitage was intensely honest. He wanted this to be right; he wanted to be absolutely positive that this love was the real love, something that would sweep on calmly like a great river, not like a noisy, gay little brook that would suddenly pop into the ground and disappear, nobody knew why or where. He saw the obscurities through which he must go; the whimsical charm of this lovely child-woman, her loneliness and the mystery which enshrouded her. He wasn't sure that her very singular presence in his own home hadn't caused the amazing upheaval of his senses. The picture of her sitting there before the fire returned so vividly, just there in front of him, that he veered a little, actually, for fear he might step into or onto the picture.
"Let's go home!" So long as he lived he would never forget the tone in which she had spoken those magical words.
The long walk solved nothing. The riddle was all around him when he entered the hotel and asked for his key. He was drenched with cold rain, too, and the nap of his silk hat was ruined beyond recall.
He did not see Doris again for three days, though he talked to her once a day over the telephone. He wanted to fight his doubts to a conclusion before he saw her again. But each night, somewhere around nine o'clock, he patrolled the opposite side of the street, watching the windows of what had once been an ordinary, unlovely brownstone, but which was now worthy of a site in the ancient city of Bagdad.
On the third night he awoke to the astonishing fact that his vigils were being shared by another. Almost directly in front of the house stood a fire-box. A man leaned against it. He remained motionless for fully an hour; then he walked away. Armitage had noticed him on the previous nights, but casually. To-night, however, the singularity of the event stirred him into the realization of the fact that yonder individual was watching the house. As the man started to walk away Armitage ran across, hailing:
"Just a moment there, if you please!"
The man stopped.
"Are you watching that house?" demanded Armitage.
"What's that to you?" countered the stranger, calmly.
"A good deal perhaps. A little while ago I owned that house, and I am still rather attached to it. I know its present owner. Consequently I feel that I have a right to inquire into your actions."
"You are Mr. Armitage?"
"I am."
"Thanks. Good evening."
The stranger began to walk away again, but this time Armitage caught him roughly by the sleeve.
"You will explain to me, or I'll hand you over to the police."
The man threw back the lapel of his coat and displayed a silver badge.
"You are a detective?"
"I am. Satisfied?"
"I certainly am not. What I demand to know is the meaning."
"And I don't propose to tell you."
"Let me see that badge again."
The stranger complied. The badge was the insignia of a famous private detective agency.
"If you want to ask any more questions, Mr. Armitage, go down to the office and ask them of the chief. Good night."
Armitage did not detain him further, but moodily watched him until he vanished around the first corner. A detective, and watching the house every night! What could that possibly mean? Here was a mystery that must be investigated at once.
So he called upon the agency the following morning. He was kept waiting in the reception-room for nearly an hour, which ruffled his temper considerably. When at length he was shown into the chief's office he went at the subject rather undiplomatically.
"Mr. Armitage, this is none of your business," he was bluntly told.
"I believe I can make it my business."
"How?" imperturbably. "You no longer have any legal interest in that house."
Armitage thought for a moment. "Supposing I should tell you that I had?"
"Will you be good enough to explain?"
"I'll explain fully if I have your word that my explanation will not go beyond that door."
The chief twisted his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other.
"Go ahead. A confidence in this office is inviolable."
When Armitage completed his tale the chief threw up his hands.
"Sold the house and skipped with the cash! Well, I thought I knew every trick on the calendar, but this certainly is a new one to me. Why don't you fight it?"
"The girl's father bought the house in good faith. The only hope I have is to get to Bordman."
"We could find him for you."
"I don't want the present incumbent to know anything about it."
"Some world, isn't it? What do you want to know?"
"Why your men are watching that house."
"Rest assured that we are her friends also."
But what's the object?"
"I'll tell you what, Mr. Armitage. I'll admit that you have just a little moral right to ask questions. I am acting in the interests of my client, who is wholly within his rights. Our actions mean no harm to the young lady you are interested in. Quite the contrary."
"Well, how long has this espionage been going on?"
"Since the purchase of the house. This office is always on the side of law and justice. The young lady is not in any danger whatever. In fact, she knows nothing."
Suppose I acquaint her with the fact?"
That's rather a poser. Our orders are that she must not know."
"Satisfy all my doubts, and she shall know nothing from me."
"Until January first we are her legal guardians, as you might say. Our business is to see that her servants are honest, what they do and how they act, to note who comes and goes, where she goes and what she does and with whom she makes friends, and to send in our report fortnightly."
"Her father?"
"There you have touched the queer side of this affair. I don't know who my client is. A fat certified check was sent to us in April with instructions. Our client knew what our terms were, and the check covered everything up to January first. Our reports are sent to the Italian consulate in New Orleans, whence no doubt they are forwarded to our client's actual address. You have figured in a number of these reports, Mr. Armitage. And there you are. Since this is an honorable affair, open and above-board, we have naturally made no attempt to ascertain either the name or the address of our client; but, like yourself, we suspect him to be her father."
"I am perfectly satisfied," said Armitage. "If I was a bit abrupt, my apologies."
"Don't let that worry you. The job has had us all thinking. We didn't know but the young lady was in some unknown danger. You spoke of her father. Who is he? We know his name, of course, but not what he is."
"Hubert Athelstone, an explorer and archeologist."
Reaching for Who's Who, the chief searched diligently among the A's. He shook his head and pressed a button. "The English Who's Who," he said to the clerk. But the second search was equally fruitless. "That doesn't really matter. An archeologist has to discover a king's tomb to get into those books. On the other hand, he's pretty sure to be a member of the Royal or National Geographical Society. Come with me into the next room; I've got a real library in there."
But Hubert Athelstone belonged neither to the Royal nor to the National; he was an outsider.
Doris grew tired of tossing on her pillows. So she got out of bed, put on her peacock kimono, her slippers, and sat down on the hassock by the window in the dark. The first real snowstorm was making headway. Beyond the street lamp the flakes were feathery white, this side they were black and shadowy. She wondered what time it was.
She was very unhappy. She was always comparing her own existence with that of those about her. The Burlinghams were nice and their friends were nice, but her association with them only strengthened her sense of loneliness. They all had "people," and most of them had known one another since childhood. She had no such friendships. She had formed friendships during her school days, but all these had been broken and never reformed. Those occasional visits from parents! How she had watched the greetings, sadly, with an envy that would not be smothered! And the holiday boxes! Regularly she used to receive a check. But checks could come any time; there was nothing Christmasy about slips of paper that represented money. She had wanted boxes like the others, and boxes had never come.
Still, she had been happy in those days. Beautiful Florence! The roses in the spring up the road to Fiesole, the afternoon drives in the lovely Cascine, and the rides into the Tuscany hills! Il grillo!—the lucky crickets! Each Maytime she had gone with her companions into the park and caught a singing cricket for luck and put him into a funny little wire cage, and night after night he would saw away at his fiddle (whether in rage or in happiness she never knew) until she set him free. Il grillo! That's what the Sisters had called her.
She choked and rested her head on the cold window-sill—and raised it almost instantly. Somewhere in the house the floors, the wooden floors, were talking. She listened intently. The sound came from above, directly overhead, from the storeroom on the servants' floor. "Hark!" it said; and after a little while it said, "Hark!" again. Some one was in the storeroom.
She rose to her feet, went over to her bureau, and armed herself with an electric torch and a small automatic. She then opened her door carefully and stepped out into the hall. There was enough light from the front window to guide her to the stairs. She was afraid, but she went on. Hadn't her father always told her to go on when she felt fear? To love truth was easy, to be kind was equally easy; but this thing called fear, which insisted upon recurring, which must be conquered and reconquered eternally! A draught of cold air struck her. She was conscious of it, but did not pause to investigate the source.
She mounted the stairs slowly and lightly. She did not want any of them to call out a warning, though they were all more or less talky, these stairs. She held the torch in her left hand and the automatic in her right, tensely. Her knees were shaking and she possessed a great longing to run back to her room and hide under the bedclothes. But that invisible force which had always been behind her—a compelling pride in the observance of her father's laws of conduct—made it impossible for her to turn. What if he should learn some day that she had run away in a crisis? So she went on, the bravest of the brave.
In her travels she had learned how to use firearms—another injunction which had been laid down by that imperialistic parent of hers. She could shoot passably, but always in horror if at some living target.
She decided to move in the dark, not to turn on the light of the torch until the very last moment.
The storeroom door was open. There was a wide circle of light on the ceiling. A shadow rather than a human being crouched before the wall. She saw a black square hole. A safe in the wall! Here was a thief, taking something that doubtless belonged to Mr. Armitage. For her own sake she was a bit of a coward, but for the sake of some one she liked she was as brave as a lion. Click! went the key on her torch.
"Stand up!"
The burglar, a cap drawn over his eyes and a dark handkerchief hiding the lower 
"STAND UP!"
"Hold your hands out in front of you!"
Again the man obeyed.
"Come out. Now walk toward those stairs, and don't lower your arms."
At the head of the stairs the burglar was ordered to march down, warned that the slightest suspicious movement would have serious results for him. She wondered if the man understood voices. Hers wasn't anything like her own; it was dry and thin and seemed to come out of nowhere, certainly not her throat. She kept the light of her torch focused squarely upon his back.
Now these stairs were the old-fashioned, circular kind. She did not observe that the man was quietly taking two steps to her one. As he reached the beginning of the lower curve he made a swift break for liberty. Wide-eyed, she fired. The shock of the explosion caused her to drop the torch. It bumped down the steps, casting grotesque globes of light, now on the wall, now on the ceiling, now along the spindles of the banisters, and again into her own face.
Suddenly everything went dark.