The Man in Lower Ten

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XXVII. THE SEA, THE SAND, THE STARS

  I telephoned as soon as I reached my hotel, and I had not known how muchI had hoped from seeing her until I learned that she was out of town. Ihung up the receiver, almost dizzy with disappointment, and it was fullyfive minutes before I thought of calling up again and asking if she waswithin telephone reach. It seemed she was down on the bay staying withthe Samuel Forbeses.

  Sammy Forbes! It was a name to conjure with just then. In the old daysat college I had rather flouted him, but now I was ready to take him tomy heart. I remembered that he had always meant well, anyhow, and thathe was explosively generous. I called him up.

  "By the fumes of gasoline!" he said, when I told him who I was."Blakeley, the Fount of Wisdom against Woman! Blakeley, the GreatUnkissed! Welcome to our city!"

  Whereupon he proceeded to urge me to come down to the Shack, and to saythat I was an agreeable surprise, because four times in two hoursyouths had called up to ask if Alison West was stopping with him, andto suggest that they had a vacant day or two. "Oh--Miss West!" I shoutedpolitely. There was a buzzing on the line. "Is she there?" Sam had nosuspicions. Was not I in his mind always the Great Unkissed?--whichsounds like the Great Unwashed and is even more of a reproach. He askedme down promptly, as I had hoped, and thrust aside my objections.

  "Nonsense," he said. "Bring yourself. The lady that keeps myboarding-house is calling to me to insist. You remember Dorothy, don'tyou, Dorothy Browne? She says unless you have lost your figure youcan wear my clothes all right. All you need here is a bathing suit fordaytime and a dinner coat for evening."

  "It sounds cool," I temporized. "If you are sure I won't put youout--very well, Sam, since you and your wife are good enough. I have acouple of days free. Give my love to Dorothy until I can do it myself."

  Sam met me himself and drove me out to the Shack, which proved to be asubstantial house overlooking the water. On the way he confided to methat lots of married men thought they were contented when they weremerely resigned, but that it was the only life, and that Sam, Junior,could swim like a duck. Incidentally, he said that Alison was his wife'scousin, their respective grandmothers having, at proper intervals,married the same man, and that Alison would lose her good looks if shewas not careful.

  "I say she's worried, and I stick to it," he said, as he threw the linesto a groom and prepared to get out. "You know her, and she's the kindof girl you think you can read like a book. But you can't; don't foolyourself. Take a good look at her at dinner, Blake; you won't lose yourhead like the other fellows--and then tell me what's wrong with her.We're mighty fond of Allie."

  He went ponderously up the steps, for Sam had put on weight since I knewhim. At the door he turned around. "Do you happen to know the MacLuresat Seal Harbor?" he asked irrelevantly, but Mrs. Sam came into the halljust then, both hands out to greet me, and, whatever Forbes had meant tosay, he did not pick up the subject again.

  "We are having tea in here," Dorothy said gaily, indicating the doorbehind her. "Tea by courtesy, because I think tea is the only beveragethat isn't represented. And then we must dress, for this is hop night atthe club."

  "Which is as great a misnomer as the tea," Sam put in, ponderouslystruggling out of his linen driving coat. "It's bridge night, and theonly hops are in the beer."

  He was still gurgling over this as he took me upstairs. He showed me myroom himself, and then began the fruitless search for evening raimentthat kept me home that night from the club. For I couldn't wear Sam'sclothes. That was clear, after a perspiring seance of a half hour.

  "I won't do it, Sam," I said, when I had draped his dress-coat on metoga fashion. "Who am I to have clothing to spare, like this, when manya poor chap hasn't even a cellar door to cover him. I won't do it; I'mselfish, but not that selfish."

  "Lord," he said, wiping his face, "how you've kept your figure! I can'twear a belt any more; got to have suspenders."

  He reflected over his grievance for some time, sitting on the side ofthe bed. "You could go as you are," he said finally. "We do it all thetime, only to-night happens to be the annual something or other, and--"he trailed off into silence, trying to buckle my belt around him. "Agood six inches," he sighed. "I never get into a hansom cab any morethat I don't expect to see the horse fly up into the air. Well,Allie isn't going either. She turned down Granger this afternoon, theAnnapolis fellow you met on the stairs, pigeon-breasted chap--and shealways gets a headache on those occasions."

  He got up heavily and went to the door. "Granger is leaving," he said,"I may be able to get his dinner coat for you. How well do you knowher?" he asked, with his hand on the knob.

  "If you mean Dolly--?"

  "Alison."

  "Fairly well," I said cautiously. "Not as well as I would like to. Idined with her last week in Washington. And--I knew her before that."

  Forbes touched the bell instead of going out, and told the servant whoanswered to see if Mr. Granger's suitcase had gone. If not, to bring itacross the hall. Then he came back to his former position on the bed.

  "You see, we feel responsible for Allie--near relation and all that," hebegan pompously. "And we can't talk to the people here at thehouse--all the men are in love with her, and all the women are jealous.Then--there's a lot of money, too, or will be."

  "Confound the money!" I muttered. "That is--nothing. Razor slipped."

  "I can tell you," he went on, "because you don't lose your head overevery pretty face--although Allie is more than that, of course. Butabout a month ago she went away--to Seal Harbor, to visit Janet MacLure.Know her?"

  "She came home to Richmond yesterday, and then came down here--Allie, Imean. And yesterday afternoon Dolly had a letter from Janet--somethingabout a second man--and saying she was disappointed not to have hadAlison there, that she had promised them a two weeks' visit! What doyou make of that? And that isn't the worst. Allie herself wasn't inthe room, but there were eight other women, and because Dolly had putbelladonna in her eyes the night before to see how she would look, andas a result couldn't see anything nearer than across the room, some oneread the letter aloud to her, and the whole story is out. One of thecats told Granger and the boy proposed to Allie to-day, to show her hedidn't care a tinker's dam where she had been."

  "Good boy!" I said, with enthusiasm. I liked the Granger fellow--sincehe was out of the running. But Sam was looking at me with suspicion.

  "Blake," he said, "if I didn't know you for what you are, I'd say youwere interested there yourself."

  Being so near her, under the same roof, with even the tie of a dubioussecret between us, was making me heady. I pushed Forbes toward the door.

  "I interested!" I retorted, holding him by the shoulders. "There isn't aword in your vocabulary to fit my condition. I am an island in a sunlitsea of emotion, Sam, a--an empty place surrounded by longing--a--"

  "An empty place surrounded by longing!" he retorted. "You want yourdinner, that's what's the matter with you--"

  I shut the door on him then. He seemed suddenly sordid. Dinner, Ithought! Although, as matter of fact, I made a very fair meal when,Granger's suitcase not having gone, in his coat and some other man'strousers, I was finally fit for the amenities. Alison did not comedown to dinner, so it was clear she would not go over to the club-housedance. I pled my injured arm and a ficticious, vaguely located sprainfrom the wreck, as an excuse for remaining at home. Sam regaled thetable with accounts of my distrust of women, my one love affair--withDorothy; to which I responded, as was expected, that only my failurethere had kept me single all these years, and that if Sam should bemysteriously missing during the bathing hour to-morrow, and so on.

  And when the endless meal was over, and yards of white veils had beentied over pounds of hair--or is it, too, bought by the yard?--and someeight ensembles with their abject complements had been packed into threeautomobiles and a trap, I drew a long breath and faced about. I hadjust then only one object in life--to find Alison, to assure her of myabsolute faith and confidence in her,
and to offer my help and my poorself, if she would let me, in her service.

  She was not easy to find. I searched the lower floor, the verandas andthe grounds, circumspectly. Then I ran into a little English girl whoturned out to be her maid, and who also was searching. She was concernedbecause her mistress had had no dinner, and because the tray of food shecarried would soon be cold. I took the tray from her, on the glimpse ofsomething white on the shore, and that was how I met the Girl again.

  She was sitting on an over-turned boat, her chin in her hands, staringout to sea. The soft tide of the bay lapped almost at her feet, and thedraperies of her white gown melted hazily into the sands. She lookedlike a wraith, a despondent phantom of the sea, although the adjectiveis redundant. Nobody ever thinks of a cheerful phantom. Strangelyenough, considering her evident sadness, she was whistling softly toherself, over and over, some dreary little minor air that sounded likea Bohemian dirge. She glanced up quickly when I made a misstep and mydishes jingled. All considered, the tray was out of the picture: thesea, the misty starlight, the girl, with her beauty--even the sad littlewhistle that stopped now and then to go bravely on again, as though itfought against the odds of a trembling lip. And then I came, accompaniedby a tray of little silver dishes that jingled and an unmistakable odorof broiled chicken!

  "Oh!" she said quickly; and then, "Oh! I thought you were Jenkins."

  "Timeo Danaos--what's the rest of it?" I asked, tendering my offering."You didn't have any dinner, you know." I sat down beside her. "See,I'll be the table. What was the old fairy tale? 'Little goat bleat:little table appear!' I'm perfectly willing to be the goat, too."

  She was laughing rather tremulously.

  "We never do meet like other people, do we?" she asked. "We really oughtto shake hands and say how are you."

  "I don't want to meet you like other people, and I suppose you alwaysthink of me as wearing the other fellow's clothes," I returned meekly."I'm doing it again: I don't seem to be able to help it. These areGranger's that I have on now."

  She threw back her head and laughed again, joyously, this time.

  "Oh, it's so ridiculous," she said, "and you have never seen me when Iwas not eating! It's too prosaic!"

  "Which reminds me that the chicken is getting cold, and the ice warm,"I suggested. "At the time, I thought there could be no place better thanthe farmhouse kitchen--but this is. I ordered all this for something Iwant to say to you--the sea, the sand, the stars."

  "How alliterative you are!" she said, trying to be flippant. "You arenot to say anything until I have had my supper. Look how the things arespilled around!"

  But she ate nothing, after all, and pretty soon I put the tray down inthe sand. I said little; there was no hurry. We were together, and timemeant nothing against that age-long wash of the sea. The air blew herhair in small damp curls against her face, and little by little the tideretreated, leaving our boat an oasis in a waste of gray sand.

  "If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year Do you suppose, the walrus said, that they could get it clear?"

  she threw at me once when she must have known I was going to speak. Iheld her hand, and as long as I merely held it she let it lie warm inmine. But when I raised it to my lips, and kissed the soft, open palm,she drew it away without displeasure.

  "Not that, please," she protested, and fell to whistling softly again,her chin in her hands. "I can't sing," she said, to break an awkwardpause, "and so, when I'm fidgety, or have something on my mind, Iwhistle. I hope you don't dislike it?"

  "I love it," I asserted warmly. I did; when she pursed her lips likethat I was mad to kiss them.

  "I saw you--at the station," she said, suddenly. "You--you were in ahurry to go." I did not say anything, and after a pause she drew a longbreath. "Men are queer, aren't they?" she said, and fell to whistlingagain.

  After a while she sat up as if she had made a resolution. "I am goingto confess something," she announced suddenly. "You said, you know, thatyou had ordered all this for something you--you wanted to say to me.But the fact is, I fixed it all--came here, I mean, because--I knew youwould come, and I had something to tell you. It was such a miserablething I--needed the accessories to help me out."

  "I don't want to hear anything that distresses you to tell," I assuredher. "I didn't come here to force your confidence, Alison. I camebecause I couldn't help it." She did not object to my use of her name.

  "Have you found--your papers?" she asked, looking directly at me foralmost the first time.

  "Not yet. We hope to."

  "The--police have not interfered with you?"

  "They haven't had any opportunity," I equivocated. "You needn't distressyourself about that, anyhow."

  "But I do. I wonder why you still believe in me? Nobody else does."

  "I wonder," I repeated, "why I do!"

  "If you produce Harry Sullivan," she was saying, partly to herself, "andif you could connect him with Mr. Bronson, and get a full account of whyhe was on the train, and all that, it--it would help, wouldn't it?"

  I acknowledged that it would. Now that the whole truth was almost inmy possession, I was stricken with the old cowardice. I did not want toknow what she might tell me. The yellow line on the horizon, where themoon was coming up, was a broken bit of golden chain: my heel in thesand was again pressed on a woman's yielding fingers: I pulled myselftogether with a jerk.

  "In order that what you might tell me may help me, if it will," I saidconstrainedly, "it would be necessary, perhaps, that you tell it to thepolice. Since they have found the end of the necklace--"

  "The end of the necklace!" she repeated slowly. "What about the end ofthe necklace?"

  I stared at her. "Don't you remember"--I leaned forward--"the end of thecameo necklace, the part that was broken off, and was found in the blacksealskin bag, stained with--with blood?"

  "Blood," she said dully. "You mean that you found the broken end? Andthen--you had my gold pocket-book, and you saw the necklace in it, andyou--must have thought--"

  "I didn't think anything," I hastened to assure her. "I tell you,Alison, I never thought of anything but that you were unhappy, and thatI had no right to help you. God knows, I thought you didn't want me tohelp you."

  She held out her hand to me and I took it between both of mine. No wordof love had passed between us, but I felt that she knew and understood.It was one of the moments that come seldom in a lifetime, and then onlyin great crises, a moment of perfect understanding and trust.

  Then she drew her hand away and sat, erect and determined, her fingerslaced in her lap. As she talked the moon came up slowly and threw itsbright pathway across the water. Back of us, in the trees beyond the seawall, a sleepy bird chirruped drowsily, and a wave, larger and bolderthan its brothers, sped up the sand, bringing the moon's silver to ourvery feet. I bent toward the girl.

  "I am going to ask just one question."

  "Anything you like." Her voice was almost dreary. "Was it because ofanything you are going to tell me that you refused Richey?"

  She drew her breath in sharply.

  "No," she said, without looking at me. "No. That was not the reason."