Kitabı oku: «The Bandbox», sayfa 10
XII
WON’T YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR?
Slipping quickly into the room through an opening hardly wide enough to admit his spare, small body, the man as quickly shut and locked the door and pocketed the key. This much accomplished, he swung on his heel and, without further movement, fastened his attention anew upon the girl.
Standing so – hands clasped loosely before him, his head thrust forward a trifle above his rounded shoulders, pale eyes peering from their network of wrinkles with a semi-humourous suggestion, thin lips curved in an apologetic grin: his likeness to the Mr. Iff known to Staff was something more than striking. One needed to be intimately and recently acquainted with Iff’s appearance to be able to detect the almost imperceptible points of difference between the two. Had Staff been there he might have questioned the colour of this man’s eyes, which showed a lighter tint than Iff’s, and their expression – here vigilant and predatory in contrast with Iff’s languid, half-derisive look. The line of the cheek from nose to mouth, too, was deeper and more hard than with Iff; and there was a hint of elevation in the nostrils that lent the face a guise of malice and evil – like the shadow of an impersonal sneer.
The look he bent upon Eleanor was almost a sneer: a smile in part contemptuous, in part studious; as though he pondered a problem in human chemistry from the view-point of a seasoned and experienced scientist. He cocked his head a bit to one side and stared insolently beneath half-lowered lids, now and again nodding ever so slightly as if in confirmation of some unspoken conclusion.
Against the cold, inflexible purpose in his manner, the pitiful prayer expressed in the girl’s attitude spent itself without effect. Her hands dropped to her sides; her head drooped wearily, hopelessly; her pose personified despondency profound and irremediable.
When he had timed his silence cunningly, to ensure the most impressive effect, the man moved, shifting from one foot to the other, and spoke.
“Well, Nelly …?”
His voice, modulated to an amused drawl, was much like Iff’s.
The girl’s lips moved noiselessly for an instant before she managed to articulate.
“So,” she said in a quiet tone of horror – “So it was you all the time!”
“What was me?” enquired the man inelegantly if with spirit.
“I mean,” she said, “you were after the necklace, after all.”
“To be sure,” he said pertly. “What did you think?”
“I hoped it wasn’t so,” she said brokenly. “When you escaped yesterday morning, and when tonight I found the necklace – I was so glad!”
“Then you did find it?” he demanded promptly.
She gave him a look of contempt. “You know it!”
“My dear child,” he expostulated insincerely, “what makes you say that?”
“You don’t mean to pretend you didn’t steal the bandbox from me, just now, in that taxicab, trying to get the necklace?” she demanded.
He waited an instant, then shrugged. “I presume denial would be useless.”
“Quite.”
“All right then: I won’t deny anything.”
She moved away from the telephone to a chair wherein she dropped as if exhausted, hands knitted together in her lap, her chin resting on her chest.
“You see,” said the man, “I wanted to spare you the knowledge that you were being held up by your fond parent.”
“I should have known you,” she said, “but for that disguise – the beard and motor-coat.”
“That just goes to show that filial affection will out,” commented the man. “You haven’t seen me for seven years – ”
“Except on the steamer,” she corrected.
“True, but there I kept considerately out of your way.”
“Considerately!” she echoed in a bitter tone.
“Can you question it?” he asked, lightly ironic, moving noiselessly to and fro while appraising the contents of the room with swift, searching glances.
“As, for instance, your actions tonight…”
“They simply prove my contention, dear child.” He paused, gazing down at her with a quizzical leer. “My very presence here affirms my entire devotion to your welfare.”
She looked up, dumfounded by his effrontery. “Is it worth while to waste your time so?” she enquired. “You failed the first time tonight, but you can’t fail now; I’m alone, I can’t oppose you, and you know I won’t raise an alarm. Why not stop talking, take what you want and go? And leave me to be accused of theft unless I choose to tell the world – what it wouldn’t believe – that my own father stole the necklace from me!”
“Ah, but how unjust you are!” exclaimed the man. “How little you know me, how little you appreciate a father’s affection!”
“And you tried to rob me not two hours ago!”
“Yes,” he said cheerfully: “I admit it. If I had got away with it then – well and good. You need never have known who it was. Unhappily for both of us, you fooled me.”
“For both of us?” she repeated blankly.
“Precisely. It puts you in a most serious position. That’s why I’m here – to save you.”
In spite of her fatigue, the girl rose to face him. “What do you mean?”
“Simply that between us we’ve gummed this business up neatly – hard and fast. You see – I hadn’t any use for that hat; I stopped in at an all-night telegraph station and left it to be delivered to Miss Landis, never dreaming what the consequences would be. Immediately thereafter, but too late, I learned – I’ve a way of finding out what’s going on, you know – that Miss Landis had already put the case in the hands of the police. It makes it very serious for you – the bandbox returned, the necklace still in your possession, your wild, incredible yarn about meaning to restore it …”
In her overwrought and harassed condition, the sophistry illuded her; she was sensible only of the menace his words distilled. She saw herself tricked and trapped, meshed in a web of damning circumstance; everything was against her – appearances, the hands of all men, the cruel accident that had placed the necklace in her keeping, even her parentage. For she was the daughter of a notorious thief, a man whose name was an international byword. Who would believe her protestations of innocence – presuming that the police should find her before she could reach either Staff or Miss Landis?
“But,” she faltered, white to her lips, “I can take it to her now – instantly – ”
Instinctively she clutched her handbag. The man’s eyes appreciated the movement. His face was shadowed for a thought by the flying cloud of a sardonic smile. And the girl saw and read that smile.
“Unless,” she stammered, retreating from him a pace or two – “unless you – ”
He silenced her with a reassuring gesture.
“You do misjudge me!” he said in a voice that fairly wept.
Hope flamed in her eyes. “You mean – you can’t mean – ”
Again he lifted his hand. “I mean that you misconstrue my motive. Far be it from me to deny that I am – what I am. We have ever been plain-spoken with one another. You told me what I was seven years ago, when you left me, took another name, disowned me and …” His voice broke affectingly for an instant. “No matter,” he resumed, with an obvious effort. “The past is past, and I am punished for all that I have ever done or ever may do, by the loss of my daughter’s confidence and affection. It is my fault; I have no right to complain. But now … Yes, I admit I tried to steal the necklace in the Park tonight. But I failed, and failing I did that which got you into trouble. Now I’m here to help you extricate yourself. Don’t worry about the necklace – keep it, hide it where you will. I don’t want and shan’t touch, it on any conditions.”
“You mean I’m free to return it to Miss Landis?” she gasped, incredulous.
“Just that.”
“Then – where can I find her?”
He shrugged. “There’s the rub. She’s left town.”
She steadied herself with a hand on the table. “Still I can follow her…”
“Yes – and must. That’s what I’ve come to tell you and to help you do.”
“Where has she gone?”
“To her country place in Connecticut, on the Sound shore.”
“How can I get there? By railroad?” Eleanor started toward the telephone.
“Hold on!” he said sharply. “What are you going to do?”
“Order a time-table – ”
“Useless,” he commented curtly. “Every terminal in the city is already watched by detectives. They’d spot you in a twinkling. Your only salvation is to get to Miss Landis before they catch you.”
In her excitement and confusion she could only stand and stare. A solitary thought dominated her consciousness, dwarfing and distorting all others: she was in danger of arrest, imprisonment, the shame and ignominy of public prosecution. Even though she were to be cleared of the charge, the stain of it would cling to her, an ineradicable blot.
And every avenue of escape was closed to her! Her lips trembled and her eyes brimmed, glistening. Despair lay cold in her heart.
She was so weary and distraught with the strain of nerves taut and vibrant with emotion, that she was by no means herself. She had no time for either thought or calm consideration; and even with plenty of time, she would have found herself unable to think clearly and calmly.
“What am I to do, then?” she whispered.
“Trust me,” the man replied quietly. “There’s just one way to reach this woman without risk of detection – and that’s good only if we act now. Get your things together; pay your bill; leave word to deliver your trunks to your order; and come with me. I have a motor-car waiting round the corner. In an hour we can be out of the city. By noon I can have you at Miss Landis’ home.”
“Yes,” she cried, almost hysterical – “yes, that’s the way!”
“Then do what packing you must. Here, I’ll lend a hand.”
Fortunately, Eleanor had merely opened her trunks and bags, removing only such garments and toilet accessories as she had required for dinner and the theatre. These lay scattered about the room, easily to be gathered up and stuffed with careless haste into her trunks. In ten minutes the man was turning the keys in their various locks, while she stood waiting with a small handbag containing a few necessaries, a motor-coat over her arm, a thick veil draped from her hat.
“One minute,” the man said, straightening up from the last piece of luggage. “You were telephoning when I came in?”
“Yes – to Mr. Staff, to explain why I failed to bring him the bandbox.”
“Hmmm.” He pondered this, chin in hand. “He’ll be fretting. Does he know where you are?”
“No – I forgot to tell him.”
“That’s good. Still, you’d better call him up again and put his mind at rest. It may gain us a few hours.”
“What am I to say?”
She lifted her hand to the receiver.
“Tell him you were cut off and had trouble getting his number again. Say your motor broke down in Central Park and you lost your way trying to walk home. Say you’re tired and don’t want to be disturbed till noon; that you have the necklace safe and will give it to him if he will call tomorrow.”
Eleanor took a deep breath, gave the number to the switchboard operator and before she had time to give another instant’s consideration to what she was doing, found herself in conversation with Staff, reciting the communication outlined by her evil genius in response to his eager questioning.
The man was at her elbow all the while she talked – so close that he could easily overhear the other end of the dialogue. This was with a purpose made manifest when Staff asked Eleanor where she was stopping, when instantly the little man clapped his palm over the transmitter.
“Tell him the St. Regis,” he said in a sharp whisper.
Her eyes demanded the reason why.
“Don’t stop to argue – do as I say: it’ll give us more time. The St. Regis!”
He removed his hand. Blindly she obeyed, reiterating the name to Staff and presently saying good-bye.
“And now – not a second to spare – hurry!”
In the hallway, while they waited for the elevator, he had further instructions for her.
“Go to the desk and ask for your bill,” he said, handing her the key to her room. “You’ve money, of course?.. Say that you’re called unexpectedly away and will send a written order for your trunks early in the morning. If the clerk wants an address, tell him the Auditorium, Chicago. Now …”
They stepped from the dimly lighted hall into the brilliant cage of the elevator. It dropped, silently, swiftly, to the ground floor, somehow suggesting to the girl the workings of her implacable, irresistible destiny. So precisely, she felt, she was being whirled on to her fate, like a dry leaf in a gale, with no more volition, as impotent to direct her course…
Still under the obsession of this idea, she went to the desk, paid her bill and said what she had been told to say about her trunks. Beyond that point she did not go, chiefly because she had forgotten and was too numb with fatigue to care. The clerk’s question as to her address failed to reach her understanding; she turned away without responding and went to join at the door the man who seemed able to sway her to his whim.
She found herself walking in the dusky streets, struggling to keep up with the rapid pace set by the man at her side.
After some time they paused before a building in a side street. By its low façade and huge sliding doors she dimly perceived it to be a private garage. In response to a signal of peculiar rhythm knuckled upon the wood by her companion, the doors rolled back. A heavy-eyed mechanic saluted them drowsily. On the edge of the threshold a high-powered car with a close-coupled body stood ready.
With the docility of that complete indifference which is bred of deadening weariness, she submitted to being helped to her seat, arranged her veil to protect her face and sat back with folded hands, submissive to endure whatsoever chance or mischance there might be in store for her.
The small man took the seat by her side; the mechanic cranked and jumped to his place. The motor snorted, trembling like a thoroughbred about to run a race, then subsiding with a sonorous purr swept sedately out into the deserted street, swung round a corner into Broadway, settled its tires into the grooves of the car-tracks and leaped northwards like an arrow.
The thoroughfare was all but bare of traffic. Now and again they had to swing away from the car-tracks to pass a surface-car; infrequently they passed early milk wagons, crawling reluctantly over their routes. Pedestrians were few and far between, and only once, when they dipped into the hollow at Manhattan Street, was it necessary to reduce speed in deference to the law as bodied forth in a balefully glaring, solitary policeman.
The silken song of six cylinders working in absolute harmony was as soothing as a lullaby, the sweep of the soft, fresh morning air past one’s cheeks as soft and quieting as a mother’s caress. Eleanor yielded to their influence as naturally as a tired child. Her eyes closed; she breathed regularly, barely conscious of the sensation of resistless flight.
Hot and level, the rays of the rising sun smote her face and roused her as the car crossed McComb’s Dam Bridge; and for a little time thereafter she was drowsily sentient – aware of wheeling streets and endless, marching ranks of houses. Then again she dozed, recovering her senses only when, after a lapse of perhaps half an hour, the noise of the motor ceased and the big machine slowed down smoothly to a dead halt.
She opened her eyes, comprehending dully a complete change in the aspect of the land. They had stopped on the right of the road, in front of a low-roofed wooden building whose signboard creaking overhead in the breeze named the place an inn. To the left lay a stretch of woodland; and there were trees, too, behind the inn, but in less thick array, so that it was possible to catch through their trunks and foliage glimpses of blue water splashed with golden sunlight. A soft air fanned in off the water, sweet and clean. The sky was high and profoundly blue, unflecked by cloud.
With a feeling of gratitude, she struggled to recollect her wits and realise her position; but still her weariness was heavy upon her. The man she called her father was coming down the path from the inn doorway. He carried a tumbler brimming with a pale amber liquid. Walking round to her side of the car he offered it.
“Drink this,” she heard him say in a pleasant voice; “it’ll help you brace up.”
Obediently she accepted the glass and drank. The soul of the stuff broke out in delicate, aromatic bubbles beneath her nostrils. There was a stinging but refreshing feeling in her mouth and throat. She said “champagne” sleepily to herself, and with a word of thanks returned an empty glass.
She heard the man laugh, and in confusion wondered why. If anything, she felt more sleepy than before.
He climbed back into his seat. A question crawled in her brain, tormenting. Finally she managed to enunciate a part of it:
“How much longer …?”
“Oh, not a great ways now.”
The response seemed to come from a far distance. She felt the car moving beneath her and … no more. Sleep possessed her utterly, heavy and dreamless…
There followed several phases of semi-consciousness wherein she moved by instinct alone, seeing men as trees walking, the world as through a mist.
In one, she was being helped out of the motor-car. Then somebody was holding her arm and guiding her along a path of some sort. Planks rang hollowly beneath her feet, and the hand on her arm detained her. A voice said: “This way – just step right out; you’re perfectly safe.” Mechanically she obeyed. She felt herself lurch as if to fall, and then hands caught and supported her as she stood on something that swayed. The voice that had before spoken was advising her to sit down and take it easy. Accordingly, she sat down. Her seat was rocking like a swing, and she heard dimly the splash of waters; these merged unaccountably again into the purring of a motor…
And then somebody had an arm round her waist and she was walking, bearing heavily upon that support, partly because she sorely needed it but the more readily because she knew somehow – intuitively – that the arm was a woman’s. A voice assured her from time to time: “Not much farther …” And she was sure it was a woman’s voice… Then she was being helped to ascend a steep, long staircase…
She came to herself for a moment, probably not long after climbing the stairs. She was sitting on the edge of a bed in a small, low-ceiled room, cheaply and meagrely furnished. Staring wildly about her, she tried to realise these surroundings. There were two windows, both open, admitting floods of sea air and sunlight; beyond them she saw green boughs swaying slowly, and through the boughs patches of water, blue and gold. There was a door opposite the bed; it stood open, revealing a vista of long, bare hallway, regularly punctuated by doors.
The drumming in her temples pained and bewildered her. Her head felt dense and heavy. She tried to think and failed. But the knowledge persisted that something was very wrong with her world – something that might be remedied, set right, if only she could muster up strength to move and … think.
Abruptly the doorway was filled by the figure of a woman, a strapping, brawny creature with the arms and shoulders of a man and a great, coarse, good-natured face. She came directly to the bed, sat down beside the girl, passed an arm behind her shoulders and offered her a glass.
“You’ve just woke up, ain’t you?” she said soothingly. “Drink this and lay down and you’ll feel better before long. You have had a turn, and no mistake; but you’ll be all right now, never fear. Come now, drink it, and I’ll help you loose your clothes a bit, so ’s you can be comfortable…”
Somehow her tone inspired Eleanor with confidence. She drank, submitted to being partially undressed, and lay down. Sleep overcame her immediately: she suffered a sensation of dropping plummet-wise into a great pit of oblivion…
XIII
WRECK ISLAND
Suddenly, with a smothered cry of surprise, Eleanor sat up. She seemed to have recovered full consciousness and sensibility with an instantaneous effect comparable only to that of electric light abruptly flooding a room at night. A moment ago she had been an insentient atom sunk deep in impenetrable night; now she was herself – and it was broad daylight.
With an abrupt, automatic movement, she left the bed and stood up, staring incredulously at the substance of what still wore in her memory the guise of a dream.
But it had been no dream, after all. She was actually in the small room with the low ceiling and the door (now shut) and the windows that revealed the green of leaves and the blue and gold of a sun-spangled sea. And her coat and hat and veil had been removed and were hanging from nails in the wall behind the door, and her clothing had been unfastened – precisely as she dimly remembered everything that had happened with relation to the strange woman.
She wore a little wrist-watch. It told her that the hour was after four in the afternoon.
She began hurriedly to dress, or rather to repair the disorder of her garments, all the while struggling between surprise that she felt rested and well and strong, and a haunting suspicion that she had been tricked.
Of the truth of this suspicion, confirmatory evidence presently overwhelmed her.
Since that draught of champagne before the roadside inn shortly after sunrise, she had known nothing clearly. It was impossible that she could without knowing it have accomplished her purpose with relation to Alison Landis and the Cadogan collar. She saw now, she knew now beyond dispute, that she had been drugged – not necessarily heavily; a simple dose of harmless bromides would have served the purpose in her overtaxed condition – and brought to this place in a semi-stupor, neither knowing whither she went nor able to object had she known.
The discovery of her handbag was all that was required to transmute fears and doubts into irrefragable knowledge.
No longer fastened to her wrist by the loop of its silken thong, she found the bag in plain sight on the top of a cheap pine bureau. With feverish haste she examined it. The necklace was gone.
Dropping the bag, she stared bitterly at her distorted reflection in a cracked and discoloured mirror.
What a fool, to trust the man! In the clear illumination of unclouded reason which she was now able to bring to bear upon the episode, she saw with painful distinctness how readily she had lent herself to be the dupe and tool of the man she called her father. Nothing that he had urged upon her at the St. Simon had now the least weight in her understanding; all his argument was now seen to be but the sheerest sophistry, every statement he had made and every promise fairly riddled with treachery; hardly a phrase he had uttered would have gained an instant’s credence under the analysis of a normal intelligence. He could have accomplished nothing had she not been without sleep for nearly twenty-four hours, with every nerve and fibre and faculty aching for rest. But, so aided – with what heartless ease had he beguiled and overreached her!
Tears, hot and stinging, smarted in her eyes while she fumbled with the fastenings of her attire – tears of chagrin and bitter resentment.
As soon as she was ready and composed, she opened the door very gently and stepped out into the hall.
It was a short hall, set like the top bar of a T-square at the end of a long, door-lined corridor. The walls were of white, plain plaster, innocent of paper and in some places darkly blotched with damp and mildew. The floor, though solid, was uncarpeted. Near at hand a flight of steps ran down to the lower floor.
After a moment of hesitation she chose to explore the long corridor rather than to descend at once by the nearer stairway; and gathering her skirts about her ankles (an instinctive precaution against making a noise engendered by the atmosphere of the place rather than the result of coherent thought) she stole quietly along between its narrow walls.
Although some few were closed, the majority of the doors she passed stood open; and these all revealed small, stuffy cubicles with grimy, unpainted floors, grimy plaster walls and ceilings and grimy windows whose panes were framed in cobwebs and crusted so thick with the accumulated dust and damp of years that they lacked little of complete opacity. No room contained any furnishing of any sort.
The farther she moved from her bedroom, the more close and stale and sluggish seemed the air, the more oppressive the quiet of this strange tenement. The sound of her footfalls, light and stealthy though they were, sounded to her ears weirdly magnified in volume; and the thought came to her that if she were indeed trespassing upon forbidden quarters of the mean and dismal stronghold of some modern Bluebeard, the noise she was making would quickly enough bring the warders down upon her. And yet it must have been that her imagination exaggerated the slight sounds that attended her cautious advance; for presently she had proof enough that they could have been audible to none but herself.
Half-way down the corridor she came unexpectedly to a second staircase; double the width of the other, it ran down to a broad landing and then in two short flights to the ground floor of the building. The well of this stairway disclosed a hall rather large and well-finished, if bare. Directly in front of the landing, where the short flights branched at right angles to the main, was a large double door, one side of which stood slightly ajar. Putting this and that together, Eleanor satisfied herself that she overlooked the entrance-hall and office of an out-of-the-way summer hotel, neither large nor in any way pretentious even in its palmiest days, and now abandoned – or, at best, consecrated to the uses of caretakers and whoever else might happen to inhabit the wing whence she had wandered.
Now as she paused for an instant, looking down while turning this thought over in her mind and considering the effect upon herself and fortunes of indefinite sequestration in such a spot, she was startled by a cough from some point invisible to her in the hall below. On the heels of this, she heard something even more inexplicable: the dull and hollow clang of a heavy metal door. Footsteps were audible immediately: the quick, nervous footfalls of somebody coming to the front of the house from a point behind the staircase.
Startled and curious, the girl drew back a careful step or two until sheltered by the corridor wall at its junction with the balustrade. Here she might lurk and peer, see but not be seen, save through unhappy mischance.
The man came promptly into view. She had foretold his identity, had known it would be … he whom she must call father.
He moved briskly to the open door, paused and stood looking out for an instant, then with his air of furtive alertness, yet apparently sure that he was unobserved and wholly unsuspicious of the presence of the girl above him, swung back toward the staircase. For an instant, terrified by the fear that he meant to ascend, she stood poised on the verge of flight; but that he had another intention at once became apparent. Stopping at the foot of the left-hand flight of steps, he laid hold of the turned knob on top of the outer and lifted it from its socket. Then he took something from his coat pocket, dropped it into the hollow of the newel, replaced the knob and turned and marched smartly out of the house, shutting the door behind him.
Eleanor noticed that he didn’t lock it.
At the same time three separate considerations moved her to fly back to her room. She had seen something not intended for her sight; the knowledge might somehow prove valuable to her; and if she were discovered in the corridor, the man might reasonably accuse her of spying. Incontinently she picked up her skirts and ran.
The distance wasn’t as great as she had thought; in a brief moment she was standing before the door of the bedroom as though she had just come out – her gaze directed expectantly toward the small staircase.
If she had anticipated a visit from her kidnapper, however, she was pleasantly disappointed. Not a sound came from below, aside from a dull and distant thump and thud which went on steadily, if in syncopated measure, and the source of which perplexed her.
At length she pulled herself together and warily descended the staircase. It ended in what was largely a counterpart of the hall above: as on the upper floor broken by the mouth of a long corridor, but with a door at its rear in place of the window upstairs. From beyond the door came the thumping, thudding sound that had puzzled Eleanor; but now she could distinguish something more: a woman’s voice crooning an age-old melody. Then the pounding ceased, shuffling footsteps were audible, and a soft clash of metal upon metal: shuffle again, and again the intermittent, deadened pounding.
Suddenly she understood, and understanding almost smiled, in spite of her gnawing anxiety, to think that she had been mystified so long by a noise of such humble origin: merely that of a woman comfortably engaged in the household task of ironing. It was simple enough, once one thought of it; yet ridiculously incongruous when injected into the cognisance of a girl whose brain was buzzing with the incredible romance of her position…
Without further ceremony she thrust open the door at the end of the hallway.
There was disclosed a room of good size, evidently at one time a living-room, now converted to the combined offices of kitchen and dining-room. A large deal table in the middle of the floor was covered with a turkey-red cloth, with places set for four. On a small range in the recess of what had once been an open fireplace, sad-irons were heating side by side with simmering pots and a steaming tea-kettle. There was a rich aroma of cooking in the air, somewhat tinctured by the smell of melting wax, but in spite of that madly appetising to the nostrils of a young woman made suddenly aware that she had not eaten for some sixteen hours. The furnishings of the room were simple and characteristic of country kitchens – including even the figure of the sturdy woman placidly ironing white things on a board near the open door.
