He was the angrier because he had been for days screwing up his courage to the point of seeking Quarrier face to face. He had not wished to do it; the scene, and his own attitude in it, could only be repugnant to him, although he continually explained to himself that it was restitution, not extortion.
But whatever it was, he didn’t like to figure in it, and he had hung back as long as circumstances permitted. But his new lodgings and his new friends were expensive; and Plank, he supposed, was off somewhere fishing; so he hung on as long as it was possible; then, exasperated by necessity, started for Quarrier’s office, only to miss him by a few seconds because he was fool enough to waste his temper and his opportunity in making an enemy out of a friend!
“Oh,” he groaned, “what an ass I am!” And he got out of his cab in front of a very new limestone basement house with red geraniums blooming on the window-sills, and let himself in with a latch-key.
The interior of the house was attractive in a rather bright, new, clean fashion. There seemed to be a great deal of white wood-work about, a wilderness of slender white spindles supporting the dark, rich mahogany handrail of the stairway; elaborate white grilles between snowy, Corinthian pillars separating the hall from the drawing-room, where a pale gilt mirror over a white, colonial mantel reflected a glass chandelier and panelled walls hung with pale blue silk.
All was new, very clean, very quiet; the maid, too, who appeared at the sound of the closing door and took his hat and gloves was as newly groomed as the floors and wood-work, and so noiseless as to be conspicuous in her swift, silent movements.
Yet there was something about it all — about the bluish silvery half-light, the spotless floors and walls, the abnormally noiseless maid in her flamboyant cap and apron — that arrested attention and fixed it. The soundless brightness of the house was as conspicuous as the contrast between the maid’s black gown and her snow-white cuffs. There was nothing subdued about anything, although the long, silvery blue curtains were drawn over the lace window hangings; no shadows anywhere, no half-lights. The very stillness was gay with suspense, like a pretty woman’s suppressed laughter glimmering in her eyes.
And into this tinted light, framed in palest blue and white, waddled Mortimer, appropriate as a June-bug scrambling in a Sèvres teacup.
“Anybody here?” he growled, leering into the drawing-room at a tiny grand piano cased in unvarnished Circassian walnut.
“There is nobody at home, sir,” said the maid.
“Music lesson over?”
“Yes, sir, at three.”
He began to ascend the stairway, breathing heavily, thud, thud over the deep velvet strip, his fat hand grasping the banister rail.
Somewhere on the second floor a small dog barked, and Mortimer traversed the ball and opened the door into a room hung with gold Spanish leather and pale green curtains.
“Hello, Tinto!” he said affably as a tiny Japanese spaniel hurled herself at him, barking furiously, then began writhing and weaving herself about him, gurgling recognition and welcome.
He sat down heavily in a padded easy-chair. The spaniel sprang into his lap, wheezing, sniffling, goggling its protruding eyes. Mortimer liked the dog, but he didn’t like what the owner of the dog said about the resemblance between his own and Tinto’s eyes.
“Get down!” he said; “you’re shedding black and white hairs all over me.” But the dog didn’t want to get down, and Mortimer’s good nature permitted her to curl up on his fat knees and sleep that nervous, twitching sleep peculiar to overpampered toy canines.
The southern sun was warm in the room; the windows open, but not a silken hanging stirred.
Presently another maid entered, with an apple cut into thin wafers and a decanter of port; and Mortimer lay back in his chair, sopping his apple in the thick, crimson wine, and feeding morsels of the combination to himself and to Tinto at intervals until the apple was all gone and the decanter three-fourths empty.
It was very still in the room — so still, that Mortimer, opening his eyes at longer and longer intervals to peer at the door, finally opened them no more.
The droning gurgle that he made kept Tinto awake. When his lower jaw sagged, and he began to really show what snoring could be, Tinto, very nervous, got up and hopped down.
It was still daylight when Mortimer awoke, conscious of people about him. As he opened his eyes, a man laughed; several people seated by the windows joined in. Then, straightening up with an effort, something tumbled from his head to the floor and he started to rise.
“Oh, look out, Leroy! Don’t step on my hat!” cried a girl’s voice; and he sank back in his chair, gazing stupidly around.
“Hello! you people!” he said, amused; “I guess I’ve been asleep. Oh, is that you Millbank? Whose hat was that — yours, Lydia?”
He yawned, laughed, turning his heavy eyes from one to another, recognising a couple of young girls at the window. He didn’t want to get up; but there is, in the society he now adorned, a stringency of etiquette known as “re-finement,” and which, to ignore, is to become unpopular.
So he got onto his massive legs and went over to shake hands with a gravity becoming the ceremony.
“How d’ye do, Miss Hutchinson? Thought you were at Asbury Park. How de do, Miss Del Garcia. Have you been out in Millbank’s motor yet?”
“We broke down at McGowan’s Pass,” said Miss Del Garcia, laughing the laugh that had made her so attractive in “A Word to the Wise.”
“Muddy gasoline,” nodded Millbank tersely — an iron-jawed, over-groomed man of forty, with a florid face shaved blue.
“We passed Mr. Plank’s big touring-car,” observed Lydia Vyse, shifting Tinto to the couch and brushing the black and white hairs from her automobile coat. “How much does a car like that cost, Leroy?”
“About twenty-five thousand,” he said gloomily. Then, looking up, “Hold on, Millbank, don’t be going! Why can’t you all dine with us? Never mind your car; ours is all right, and we’ll run out into the country for dinner. How about it, Miss Del Garcia?”
But both Miss Del Garcia and Miss Hutchinson had accepted another invitation, in which Millbank was also included.
They stood about, veils floating, leather decorated coats thrown back, lingering for awhile to talk the garage talk which fascinates people of their type; then Millbank looked at the clock, made his adieux to Lydia, nodded significantly to Mortimer, and followed the others down-stairs.
There was something amiss with his motor, for it made a startling racket in the street, finally plunging forward with a kick.
Lydia laughed as the two young girls in the tonneau turned to nod to her in mock despair; then she came running back up-stairs, holding her skirt free from her hurrying little feet.
“Well?” she inquired, as Mortimer turned back from the window to confront her.
“Nothing doing, little girl,” he said with a sombre smile.
She looked at him, slowly divesting herself of her light leather-trimmed coat.
“I missed him,” said Mortimer.
She flung the coat over a chair, stood a moment, her fingers busy with her hair-pegs, then sat down on the couch, taking Tinto into her lap. She was very pretty, dark, slim, marvellously graceful in her every movement.
“I missed him,” repeated Mortimer.
“Can’t you see him to-morrow?” she asked.
“I suppose so,” said Mortimer slowly. “Oh, Lord! how I hate this business!”
“Hasn’t he misused your confidence? Hasn’t he taken your money?” she asked. “It may be unpleasant for you to make him unbelt, but you’re a coward if you don’t!”
“Easy! easy, now!” muttered Mortimer; “I’m going to shake it out of him. I said I would, and I will.”
“I should hope so; it’s yours.”
“Certainly it’s mine. I wish I’d held fast now. I never supposed Plank would take hold. It was that drivelling old Belwether who scared me stiff! The minute I saw him scurrying to cover like
a singed cat I was fool enough to climb the first tree. I’ve had my lesson, little girl.”
“I hope you’ll give Howard his. Somebody ought to,” she said quietly.
Then gathering up her hat and coat she went into her own apartments. Mortimer picked up a cheap magazine, looked over the portraits of the actresses, then, hunching up into a comfortable position, settled himself to read the theatrical comment.
Later, Lydia not appearing, and his own valet arriving to turn on the electricity, bring him his White Rock and Irish and the Evening Telegraph, he hoisted his legs into another chair and sprawled there luxuriously over his paper until it was time to dress.
About half past eight they dined in a white and pink dining-room furnished in dull gray walnut, and served by a stealthy, white-haired, pink-skinned butler, chiefly remarkable because it seemed utterly impossible to get a glimpse of his eyes. Nobody could tell whether there was anything the matter with them or not — and whether they were only very deep set or were weak, like an albino’s, or were slightly crossed, the guests of the house never knew. Lydia herself didn’t know, and had given up trying to find out.
They had planned to go for a spin in Mortimer’s motor after dinner, but in view of the Quarrier fiasco neither was in the mood for anything.
Mortimer, as usual, ate and drank heavily. He was a carnivorous man, and liked plenty of thick, fat, underdone meat. As for Lydia, her appetite was as erratic as her own impulses. Her table, always wastefully elaborate, no doubt furnished subsistence for all the relatives of her household below stairs, and left sufficient for any ambitious butler to make a decent profit on.
“Do you know, Leroy,” she observed, as they left the table and sauntered back into the pale blue drawing-room, “do you know that the servants haven’t been paid for three months?”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” he expostulated, “don’t begin that sort of thing! I get enough of that at home; I get it every time I show my nose!”
“I only mentioned it,” she said carelessly.
“I heard you all right. It isn’t any pleasanter for me than for you. In fact, I’m sick of it; I’m dead tired of being up against it every day of my life. When a man has anything somebody gets it before he can sidestep. When a man’s dead broke there’s nobody in sight to touch.”
“You had an opportunity to make Howard pay you back.”
“Didn’t I tell you I missed him?”
“Yes. What are you going to do?”
“Do?”
“Of course. You are going to do something, I suppose.”
They had reached the gold and green room above. Lydia began pacing the length of a beautiful Kermanshah rug — a pale, delicate marvel of rose and green on a ground of ivory — lovely, but doomed to fade sooner than the pretty woman who trod it with restless, silk-shod feet.
Mortimer had not responded to her last question. She said presently: “You have never told me how you intend to make him pay you back.”
“What?” inquired Mortimer, turning very red.
“I said that you haven’t yet told me how you intend to make Howard return the money you lost through his juggling with your stock.”
“I don’t exactly know myself,” admitted Mortimer, still overflushed. “I mean to put it to him squarely, as a debt of honour that he owes. I asked him whether to invest. Damn him! he never warned me not to. He is morally responsible. Any man who would sit there and nod monotonously like a mandarin, knowing all the while what he was doing to wreck the company, and let a friend put into a rotten concern all the cash he could scrape together, is a swindler!”
“I think so too,” she said, studying the rose arabesques in the rug.
There was a little click of her teeth when she ended her inspection and looked across at Mortimer. Something in her expressionless gaze seemed to reassure him, and give him a confidence he may have lacked.
“I want him to understand that I won’t swallow that sort of contemptible treatment,” asserted Mortimer, lighting a thick, dark cigar.
“I hope you’ll make him understand,” she said, seating herself and resting her clasped, brilliantly ringed hands in her lap.
“Oh, I will — never fear! He has abused my confidence abominably; he has practically swindled me, Lydia. Don’t you think so?”
She nodded.
“I’ll tell him so, too,” blustered Mortimer, shaking himself into an upright posture, and laying a pudgy, clinched fist on the table. “I’m not afraid of him! He’ll find that out, too. I know enough to stagger him. Not that I mean to use it. I’m not going to have him think that my demands on him for my own property resemble extortion.”
“Extortion?” she repeated.
“Yes. I don’t want him to think I’m trying to intimidate him. I won’t have him think I’m a grafter; but I’ve half a mind to shake that money out of him, in one way or another.”
He struck the table and looked at her for further sign of approval.
“I’m not afraid of him,” he repeated. “I wish to God he were here, and I’d tell him so!”
She said coolly: “I was wishing that too.”
For a while they sat silent, preoccupied, avoiding each other’s direct gaze. When she rose he started, watching her in a dazed way as she walked to the telephone.
“Shall I?” she asked quietly, turning to him, her hand on the receiver.
“Wait. W-what are you going to do?” he stammered.
“Call him up. Shall I?”
A dull throb of fright pulsed through him.
“You say you are not afraid of him, Leroy.”
“No!” he said with an oath, “I am not. Go ahead!”
She unhooked the receiver. After a second or two her low, even voice sounded. There came a pause. She rested one elbow on the walnut shelf, the receiver tight to her ear. Then:
“Mr. Quarrier, please.... Yes, Mr. Howard Quarrier.... No, no name. Say it is on business of immediate importance.... Very well, then; you may say that Miss Vyse insists on speaking to him.... Yes, I’ll hold the wire.”
She turned, the receiver at her ear, and looked narrowly at Mortimer.
“Won’t he speak to you?” he demanded.
“I’m going to find out. Hush a moment!” and in the same calm, almost childish voice: “Oh, Howard, is that you? Yes, I know I promised not to do this, but that was before things happened!... Well, what am I to do when it is necessary to talk to you?... Yes, it is necessary!... I tell you it is necessary!... I am sorry it is not convenient for you to talk to me, but I really must ask you to listen!... No, I shall not write. I want to talk to you to-night — now! Yes, you may come here, if you care to!... I think you had better come, Howard.... Because I am liable to continue ringing your telephone until you are willing to listen.... No, there is nobody here. I am alone. What time?... Very well; I shall expect you. Good-bye.”
She hung up the receiver and turned to Mortimer:
“He’s coming up at once. Did I say anything to scare him particularly?”
“One thing’s sure as preaching,” said Mortimer; “he’s a coward, and I’m dammed glad of it,” he added naively, relighting his cigar, which had gone out.
“If he comes up in his motor he’ll be here in a few minutes,” she said. “Suppose you take your hat and go out. I don’t want him to think what he will think if he walks into the room and finds you waiting. You have your key, Leroy. Walk down the block; and when you see him come in, give him five minutes.”
Her voice had become a little breathless, and her colour was high. Mortimer, too, seemed apprehensive. Things had suddenly begun to work themselves out too swiftly.
“Do you think that’s best?” he faltered, looking about for his hat. “Tell Merkle that nobody has been here, if Quarrier should ask him. Do you think we’re doing it in the best way, Lydia? By God, it smells of a put-up job to me! But I guess it’s all right. It’s better for me to just happen in, isn’t it? Don’t forget to put Merkle wise.”
He descended the stairs hastily. Merkle, of the invisible eyes, held his hat and gloves and opened the door for him.
Once on the dark street, his impulse was to flee — get out, get away from the whole business. A sullen shame was pumping the hot blood up into his neck and cheeks. He strove to find an inoffensive name for what he was proposing to do, but ugly terms, synonym after synonym, crowded in to characterise the impending procedure, and he walked on angrily, half frightened, looking back from moment to moment at the house he had just left.
On the corner he halted, breathing spasmodically, for he had struck a smarter pace than he had been aware of.
Few people passed him. Once he caught a glimmer of a policeman’s buttons along the park wall, and an unpleasant shiver passed over him. At the same moment an electric hansom flew noiselessly past him. He shrank back into the shadow of a porte-cochere. The hansom halted before the limestone basement house. A tall figure left it, stood a moment in the middle of the sidewalk, then walked quickly to the front door. It opened, and the man vanished.
The hansom still waited at the door. Mortimer, his hands shaking, looked at his watch by the light of the electric bulbs flanking the gateway under which he stood.
There was not much time in which to make up his mind, yet his fright was increasing to a pitch which began to enrage him with that coward’s courage which it is impossible to reckon with.
He had missed Quarrier once to-day when he had been keyed to the encounter. Was he going to miss him again through sheer terror? Besides, was not Quarrier a coward? Besides, was it not his own money? Had he not been vilely swindled by a pretended friend? Urging, lashing himself into a heavy, shuffling motion, he emerged from the porte-cochere and lurched off down the street. No time to think now, no time for second thought, for hesitation, for weakness. He had waited too long already. He had waited ten minutes, instead of five. Was Quarrier going to escape again? Was he going to get out of the house before —
Fumbling with his latch-key, but with sense enough left to make no noise, he let himself in, passed silently through the reception-hall and up to the drawing-room floor, where for a second he stood listening. Then something of the perverted sportsman sent the blood quivering into his veins. He had him! He had run him down! The game was at bay.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 314
