by Rex Stout
“What is it?” demanded Knowlton.
“They opened up your head,” answered the doctor, still busily engaged with the bandage. “I’m putting it together again. Can you stand it?”
Knowlton smiled and closed his eyes.
“How about it?” asked Dougherty when the doctor finally arose.
“Very simple. Merely stunned. No danger. Twenty-five dollars,” said the doctor.
“Can he go home?” asked Dumain, handing him the money.
The doctor shook his head.
“Bad—very bad. Too cold. Good night.”
He opened the door, bowed, and departed.
“He’s a talkative devil,” observed Dougherty. “But how about Knowlton?”
“I have plenty of room. He can stay here,” said Dumain.
Thus it was arranged, and John Knowlton, perforce, slept under the roof of the enemy.
Dougherty offered to stay with Dumain also, and the offer was eagerly accepted. The others departed at once in a body.
No one had anything to say to Sherman; they thought it hardly worthwhile. All’s well that ends without the police.
Knowlton walked to his bed, supported by Dougherty. He was barely conscious and very weak.
They rubbed him down with witchhazel and put woolen pajamas on him and tucked him in like a baby. Then they went into the next room and sat down for a smoke.
Fifteen minutes later, thinking they heard a voice, they returned to their patient.
The voice was his own. He was talking in his sleep half deliriously.
“Lila!” he muttered. “Good-by, Lila! You know you are to live in fairyland and—hang you, Dougherty—no, I don’t mean that—Lila—”
Dumain looked at Dougherty and said: “Zat is not for us, my friend.”
Together they tiptoed silently out of the room.
CHAPTER VIII.
Until Tomorrow
WHEN YOU THROW A HEAVY LUMP OF HARD metal at a man and hit him on the side of the head you make an impression on him. I am not assuming artlessness or naïveté—I do not mean a physical impression.
What I wish to say is that his attitude and conduct toward you will undergo a sudden and notable change. He will be filled either with fear or with a desire for vengeance.
He will either betake himself to a distance where there is little possibility that you will present him with any more lumps of metal, or he will take firm and decided steps to return the one you have given him.
Of this rule of life the Erring Knights were perfectly aware, and they wondered much as to which of the two courses would be adopted by John Knowlton. As a matter of fact, he adopted neither—but let us not anticipate.
Knowlton’s injury had proved even less serious than the doctor had declared it to be. On the morning after the fight Dumain and Dougherty had been amazed on awakening to find him fully dressed and holding his hat and overcoat, standing by the side of their bed.
“Sorry to disturb you,” he had said, “but I am going. Thanks for your hospitality, Dumain. And for your—square deal—Dougherty.”
Then, before they had time to recover from their surprise or utter a word, he had turned and disappeared.
For three days the Erring Knights had neither seen him nor heard from him, and they had about concluded that he had seen the wisdom of discretion and decided to practise it.
There was a general disposition to overlook Sherman’s contribution to the little entertainment at Dumain’s rooms. To be sure, they condemned his cowardice and violence. Since, however, it appeared to have had the desired effect on Knowlton without having inflicted any permanent injury, they were inclined to pardon it. Of course they despised him, as the law does its stool pigeon; but still they tolerated him.
It was with mingled feelings of anxiety and quiet joy that Lila lived through the three days during which Knowlton did not appear at the Lamartine. She had heard nothing of what had happened after Knowlton had left her at the door that evening, but she had not forgotten the appearance of Sherman at the Restaurant Lucia; hence her anxiety. She hugged her memory and waited.
On the morning of the fourth day her patience was rewarded by the following note, handed to her at her desk in the hotel by a messenger boy:
DEAR MISS WILLIAMS:
I had expected to see you before this, but it has been impossible, owing to an accident I encountered.
I have been—let us say incapacitated.
But will you dine with me this evening? I shall call at the hotel for you at six.
JOHN KNOWLTON.
Lila flushed with happiness as she folded the note and placed it in the bosom of her dress, at the same time looking round for the messenger boy to take her answer. But the boy had disappeared. What difference? She was to be with him again!
As she glanced up and happened to meet the eye of the Venus at the cigar stand she smiled involuntarily, so brightly that Miss Hughes fairly grinned in sympathy.
This little incident did not pass unnoticed. Dumain and Dougherty, seated on the leather lounge in the corner, saw the messenger boy hand her the note and her change of color as she read it, and they glanced at each other significantly.
“I wonder!” Dougherty observed.
“Yes,” said Dumain positively. “Eet was from heem. Zat expression of zee face—I know eet. He ees a what you call eet comeback.”
And when they saw Lila place the note in her bosom they were sure of it. Dumain sighed. Dougherty swore. They departed for the billiard room to communicate the sad intelligence.
Thus were they not wholly surprised when, at six o’clock that evening, they saw Knowlton enter the lobby and walk to Lila’s desk.
There was a small, ugly, black patch over his right ear; otherwise no indication of the injury he had received at Dumain’s rooms.
He escorted Lila from the hotel, while the Erring Knights looked on in helpless silence.
Forthwith they entered into a warm discussion. Dougherty and Driscoll were for immediate and drastic action, though they were unable to suggest any particular method; Dumain, Jennings, and Booth advised delay and caution; Sherman grunted unintelligibly and left the hotel. They argued till seven o’clock, then dispersed and went their several ways without having decided on anything definitely.
Meanwhile Sherman, who had seen Knowlton and Lila enter a taxicab and followed them in another, was acting on his own account. He had his trouble for his pains.
They stopped at a restaurant for dinner, and Sherman shivered for an hour on the outside, waiting for them to reappear. He then followed them to a concert at Carnegie Hall, and kicked his heels in the foyer for two hours and a half—only to find at the end that they had left by another door, or that he had missed them in the crowd.
He swore violently under his breath, dismissed his cab, and walked at a furious pace to his room downtown, consumed by the fires of jealousy and hate.
Thenceforth the pursuit was one of relentless malignity. Sherman saw clearly that he was playing a losing game, and he redoubled his vigilance and activity with the energy of despair.
To see the woman he coveted thus smiling on another man appeared to him to justify any treachery or baseness, however vile; if, indeed, his evil mind were in need of any impetus.
He felt that he had some evidence of the correctness of his suspicions concerning Knowlton—for instance, the contents of the wallet he had taken from his coat at Dumain’s rooms; but he knew that was not enough.
There was not a day during the month that followed but found him on the heels of his quarry. He followed him to cafés, restaurants, theaters, and concert halls, often in company with Lila. He followed him home and to the Lamartine, and on endless walks along the drive and through the park. And all without result.
Then there came a sudden change in Knowlton’s habits. One weary morning he began calling at real-estate offices.
By the time they had reached the fifth of these, Sherman, who was following him, disguised with a blond wig and mustache, beg
an to suspect that he had been discovered and was being played with. But he continued the chase.
Knowlton stopped in another real-estate office, and another. Here he remained for over an hour, while Sherman lurked in a nearby doorway. Then he emerged with a companion. Sherman will not soon forget what followed.
They led him to the downtown subway.
At Brooklyn Bridge they boarded a Coney Island Elevated train. On this they rode two or three stations past Bath Beach, then left it for a trolleycar, landing finally at a dreary, swamp-like tract of land, with but one or two houses in sight.
The inevitable cheap saloon was on the corner.
Here they remained for three hours—it was a cold, windy day in January—walking up and down the newly laid eighteen-inch sidewalks while Sherman sat in the saloon, trying to warm himself with cheap brandy and watching them through a window. They gave no sign of preparation to depart. Sherman could bear it no longer.
“I wonder what the fool is up to?” he muttered as he boarded a trolley car. “Is he going to buy a home?”
And that brought with it a thought which caused him to squirm with pain.
He resumed his muttering: “By Heavens, he’ll never get her! If I have to I’ll see Colly. He can get the gang, and that means—”
A sinister smile overspread his face.
The fact about Knowlton was, he had got a job.
That evening at the Restaurant Lucia he surprised Lila by telling her of the day’s occurrences. They were dining together nearly every evening now, though Knowlton was seldom seen at the Lamartine. He called for Lila at her room.
They had discovered a common love for music and books, and spent half of their evenings at concert halls and theaters. And when Lila felt indisposed or too tired to go out, or the weather was inclement, they remained in her room and Knowlton read stories and poems to her in his deep, well-modulated voice. Lila could never decide which she liked the more—the quiet, happy evenings at home or the more exciting pleasures to be found downtown.
But one thing she knew: never before had she tasted life. For the first time she saw its colors and scented its perfumes. Each day was a new delight; each look and word of Knowlton’s a new sensation.
Knowlton spoke no word of love, and Lila wondered a little at it in her innocent way. He was attentive and solicitous even to the point of tenderness, and he was certainly not timid; but he never gave voice to any expression of sentiment.
Lila did not allow herself to be disturbed by this, nor did she employ any artifices—knowing none. She merely waited.
“Perhaps,” she would whisper to herself at night when he had gone—“perhaps he will—will tell me—when—”
Then she would flush at the half-formed thought, innocent as it was, and brush it aside.
Nor did Knowlton ever talk of himself. Long since he had heard the story of Lila’s life—how she had been left alone and penniless at the age of eighteen, and of the resulting struggle, courageous and at times almost desperate, to keep her head above the alluring and deadly waves of the metropolis. But he had given no confidence in return. He seemed forever entrenched behind an impenetrable barrier of reserve, and Lila never presumed to storm it.
Then, on the evening mentioned above, at the Restaurant Lucia, he suddenly lowered one of the gates of his barrier. They had been seated for some thirty minutes and were waiting for the roast, when, after a period of unusual taciturnity, he had suddenly burst forth:
“I got a job today.”
Lila stared at him. At her frank surprise he seemed for a moment amused, then embarrassed. He continued, trying to speak lightly.
“Yes, at last I’m going to work. Real work. Something I’ve never tried before, but I think I’ll like it.”
“What—what is it?”
“Real estate. Selling a nice wet swamp in lots of twenty-five hundred square feet each to build houses on. Though I believe they are going to drain it.” Then, as Lila remained silent, “But you aren’t interested.”
“I am,” Lila contradicted. “But—as a young lady is supposed to say when she is asked a certain question—‘this is so sudden.’ I know so little about you.”
This was almost a challenge, and it was Knowlton’s turn for silence. Then he found his tongue and soon had Lila laughing merrily at his description of the “lots” he was supposed to sell.
“But who will ever buy them?” she demanded.
“Anybody,” Knowlton declared. “There are two million people living in Manhattan. Of these exactly one million nine hundred and sixty-nine thousand five hundred and forty-two think they want to live where they can have a vegetable garden and three chickens.”
“And how about the other thirty thousand?”
“Oh, they’re the real-estate agents. They know better.”
But when Lila had finished laughing she became suddenly serious, saying:
“But that is shameful—to take such an advantage of ignorance.”
Whereupon Knowlton spent a half hour defending the ethics of his new profession, with only fair success. Lila insisted that the customers were being duped and held to her belief with such tenacity that Knowlton finally became genuinely concerned.
Lila stopped suddenly.
“But, of course, it doesn’t matter what I think,” she said, and could have bitten her tongue off the moment afterward.
Knowlton colored slightly and opened his mouth as though to protest, then was silent. This increased Lila’s embarrassment, and the waiter, approaching with their coffee, relieved an awkward situation by overturning one of the cups on the tablecloth.
From the restaurant they went to a concert.
“Some day, after they’re filled in, I’ll take you down and show you my swamps,” said Knowlton as they parted three hours later at Lila’s door. “And it does matter what you think. You know it does. Good night.”
They shook hands gravely, as was their custom.
Thereafter their meetings were less frequent. Knowlton explained that his new position took more time than he had expected and complained considerably of his trials and tribulations in the disposal of swamp lots.
But his appearance and manner contradicted him. There was a new light in his eyes, a new spring in his step, a new note of freedom in his voice. Lila wondered at it.
But he still managed to see her two or three evenings a week, and in one particular it would have seemed to the ordinary mind that he had lost a job instead of getting one.
Instead of taxicabs, they patronized the elevated and subway. Instead of orchids, he sent Lila roses and violets. Instead of de luxe, expensive editions his book presents were dressed in ordinary cloth and leather.
“To be perfectly frank, I must economize,” he had explained one evening.
Lila had exclaimed:
“I am glad!”
Though he attempted all the way downtown to get her reason for this peculiar sentiment, she obstinately refused to give it. The truth was she hardly knew her reason herself, but she felt vaguely that both the fact and his frank confession of it brought them closer together.
This, she admitted to herself, meant happiness—the only happiness she could ever have.
As for Knowlton—well, the troubles of a salesman of real estate belong properly to comedy. That is a fact. But it would be unsafe to declare it in the presence of a real-estate salesman.
Knowlton was having his full share of the usual troubles, plus a few that were peculiar to himself. He will not soon forget that month.
In the first place he was perfectly well aware that he was being shadowed by Sherman. At times he was inclined to regard it as a joke; at others it caused him serious anxiety.
More than once he started for the Lamartine to discover whether he was acting for the Erring Knights or on his own account, but something held him back—perhaps a remembrance of Sherman’s attempted bluff on the day of their first meeting. How much did Sherman know?
Then, as nothing resulted from th
e long-continued mysterious activities of the amateur detective, Knowlton gave him less and less thought.
Besides, he had no time for mysteries or Erring Knights. He was selling real estate. Not trying to—he was really selling it.
One evening when he called for Lila she found a taxicab waiting at the door as they descended the stoop.
“You see,” Knowlton explained after they had settled themselves comfortably on the cushions and the cab had started forward, “I am getting to be quite a businessman. Really, I didn’t think I had it in me. I’m fast becoming a bloated plutocrat. Someday you’ll be proud of me.”
“Not for that reason,” said Lila.
“Then there’s my last chance gone,” Knowlton laughed. “For Heaven knows I’ve nothing else to be proud of—except that you are my friend,” he added, suddenly serious.
But Lila, being in a gay mood, refused to humor him.
“Am I your friend?” she said thoughtfully.
“Aren’t you?”
“I’m just trying to decide. I do like parts of you. When you are gay you’re very jolly company. When you are serious you are impossible. It seems to me that I could get the most out of your friendship by taking a scientific course in the art of titillation.”
“Who would you practise on?”
“Oh—my cat. Goodness knows she’s grave enough—she needs it. And if it will work with her—”
“Cats never laugh,” Knowlton declared solemnly.
“What frightful ignorance!” exclaimed Lila, with immeasurable scorn. “Did you never hear of the Cheshire?”
“Cheese?”
“No. Cat.”
“But that was a grin. She didn’t laugh. The distinction is subtle, but important.”
“Well, anyway,” Lila sighed, “it ought to be effective with you.”
“But why do I need it?”
And thus they pretended to wrangle, with neither sense nor intention, till the cab stopped in front of the restaurant.
After dinner they attended a concert of one of the metropolitan string quartets. The program was short, and they arrived at Lila’s room before half past ten, their hearts filled with the singing magic of Haydn.
