The Coast of Chance

by Esther Chamberlain and Lucia Chamberlain

  XVIII

  GOBLIN TACTICS

  For a little she kept her face hidden, shutting out the present,jealously living with the wonderful thing that had happened to her. Itwas as wonderful as anything she had dreamed might come when she hadwritten him that letter. And if she needed any proof of his love, shehad had it in the moment when he had let her go. There he hadtranscended her hope. She felt lifted up, she felt triumphant, thoughthe triumph had not been hers. It was all his; he had saved her from herown weakness; his was the miracle. How he shone to her! The dark,swaying hollow of the carriage seemed still full of his presence, fullof his hurried whispering; and again she seemed to see him standingoutside the window in the deep blue evening holding out his hands to hercry of "I love you!"

  He had been wonderful in a way she had not expected. He had shown her sobeautifully that he could be reached in spite of his obsession. Mightnot she hope to touch him just a little further? Was there any heightnow that he might not rise to? She seemed to see the possible end of itall shaping itself out of his magnanimity. She seemed to see him finallyrelinquishing his passion for the jewel, and his passion for her for thesake of something finer than both. She had seen it foreshadowed in whathe had done this day--having them both in his hands, he had put themaway from him. Yet in that action she knew there had been no finality.She had touched him, but she had not convinced him, and as long as hewas unconvinced he would be at her again in some other way.

  Her hands dropped from her face, and she confronted the fact drearily."No," she thought, "he never gives up what he wants."

  She looked out of the window. The flickers of gas-lamps fellintermittently through it upon her. Her queer vehicle was rattlingcrazily--jolting as if every spring were at its last leap. She was outof the quiet, blue street. Montgomery Avenue, with its lights, itsglittering gilt names and Latin insignia, was traveling by on eitherside of her. The voice of the city was growing louder in her ears, thecrowd on the pavement increased. At intervals the carriage dippedthrough glares of electric lights that illuminated its interior in aflash broader than day--the ragged cushions, the raveled tassels, thelimp-swinging shutters, and, glimmering in the midst, wild anddisheveled, herself in all the little wavy mirrors. She sat looking outat the maze of moving lights and figures without seeing them, intent onan idea that was growing clearer, larger, moment by moment in her mind.

  Kerr's appearance in her garden--his capture of her--had not been thefantastic freak it had seemed. He had had his purpose. He had taken herout of her environment; he had carried her beyond succor or menace justthat he might carry them both so much further and faster through theirdifferences. They had not reached the point of agreement yet, but mightthey not on some other ground, where they could be unchallenged? Itseemed to her if she could only meet him on her own ground foronce--instead of for ever on Clara's or Harry's--only meet him alone,somewhere beyond their reach, it might be accomplished, it might bebrought to the end she so wished. Yet where to go to be rid of Clara andHarry, the two so closely associated with every fact of her life?

  The hack, which had been moving along at a rapid pace, slowed now to awalk among the thickening traffic, and from a mere moving mass the crowdappeared as individuals--a stream of dark figures and white faces. Hereyes slipped from one to another. Here one stood still on the lamp-litcorner, looking down, with lips moving quickly and silently. It wasstrange to see those rapid, eager, moving lips with no sound from themaudible. Then her eyes were startled by something familiar in thefigure, though the direct down-glare of the ball of light above himdistorted the features with shadows. She pressed her face against thewindow-glass in palpitating doubt. It was Harry.

  She cowered in the corner of the carriage. In a moment the risks of hersituation were before her. Had he seen her? Oh, no, at least not yet. Hehad been too intent on whomever he was talking to. She peered to makesure that he was still safely on the street corner. He was justopposite, and now that the eddy of the crowd had left a little clearspace around him she saw with whom he was talking. It was a small, verysmall, shabby, nondescript man--possibly only a boy, so short he seemed.His back was toward her. His clothes hung upon him with an oddun-Anglo-Saxon air. He was foreign with a foreignness no country couldexplain--Italian, Portuguese, Greek--whatever he was, he was a strangefoil to Harry, so bright and burnished.

  The hack was turning. She realized with dismay that it was turning sharparound that very corner where they stood. Suppose Harry should chance toglance through its window and see Flora Gilsey sitting trembling within.The hack wheezed and cramped, and all at once she heard it scrape thecurb. Then she was lost! She looked up brave in her desperation, readyto meet Harry's eyes. She saw the back of his head. For a moment itloomed directly above her, then it moved. He was separating from hiscompanion. With one stride he vanished out of the square frame of thewindow, and there remained full fronting her, staring in upon her, theface of his companion.

  Back flashed to her memory the goldsmith's shop--dull hues and odors allat once--and that wide unwinking stare that had fixed her from the otherside of the counter. The blue-eyed Chinaman! In the glare of whitelight, in his terrible clearness and nearness, she knew him instantly.

  The hack plunged forward, the face was gone. But she remained nerveless,powerless to move, frozen in her stupefaction, while her vehicle pursuedits crazy course. It was clattering up Sutter Street toward Kearney,where at this hour the town was widest awake, and the crowd was a crowdshe knew. At any instant people she knew might be going in and out ofthe florists' shops and restaurants, or passing her in carriages. Andwhat of Flora Gilsey in her morning dress and garden hat, in anight-hawk of a Telegraph Hill hack, flying through their midst like amad woman? They were the least of her fears. She had forgotten them. Theonly thing that remained to her was the memory of Harry and theblue-eyed Chinaman together on the street corner.

  She had been given a glimpse of that large scheme that Harry wascarrying forward somewhere out of her sight--such a glimpse as Clara hadgiven her in the rifling of her room, as Ella had shown in herhysterical revelation. Again she felt the threat of these ominous signsof danger, as a lone general at a last stand with his troops clusteredat his back sees in front, and behind, on either side of him, theglitter of bayonets in the bushes.

  She was in the midst of the tangled traffic of Kearney Street. Swimminglights and crowds were all around her. She peered forth cautiously uponit. She saw a florid face, a woman, she knew casually--and there hereyes fastened, not for the woman's brilliant presence, but for what shesaw directly in front of it, thrown into relief upon its background--ashort and shabby figure, foreign, equivocal, reticent, the figure of ablue-eyed Chinaman.

  He was standing still while the crowd flowed past him. This time he wasalone. He seemed to be waiting, yet not to watch, as if he had alreadyseen what he was expecting and knew that it must pass his way. It wasuncanny, his reappearance, at a second interval of her route, standingas if he had stood there from the first, patient, expectant, motionless.It was worse than uncanny.

  All at once an idea, wild and illogical enough, jumped up in her mind.Couldn't this miserable vehicle that was lumbering like a disabled bugmove faster and rattle her on out of reach of the glare, the publicity,the threat of discovery, and, above all, of her discomforting notion?She breathed out relief as the carriage dipped into the comparativequiet again, and she felt herself being driven on and up a gently risingstreet between block-apart, lone gas-lamps. She thrust her face as farout of the window as she dared, looking back at the lights and trafficwhich were drifting behind her. At this distance she could single out noone figure from the crowd, and no figure which could possibly be that ofthe blue-eyed Chinaman was moving up the street behind her. There onlyremained a disquieting memory of him on the corner with Harry. Togetherthey made a combination, to her mind, threatening to the man she loved,for whom she so desperately feared.

  If ever she had felt herself helpless, it was in this moment passingalong the half-lit, h
alf-empty city street. By what she knew, by whatshe wore around her neck, she was separated from all peace-abidingcitizens--she was outlawed. Every closed door and shaded window (so manyshe had opened or looked out of!) now seemed shut and shaded against herfor ever. Night and the reticent gray city, averting their eyes, lether slip through unregarded.

  She was passing that section of large, old-fashioned mansions, cupolaed,towered, indistinct at the top of their high, broad steps, or back amongthe trees of their gardens. Along the front of one stretched a highhedge of laurestinas black as a ribbon of the night, capacious ofshadows; and it seemed to Flora that all at once a shadow detacheditself. She looked with a start. It flashed along the pavement--ifshadow it were--running head down with a strange, scattering movement ofarms and legs, yet seeming to make such speed that for a moment it keptabreast of the cab. She could see no features, no lineament of thisstrange thing to recognize, yet instantly she knew what it must be--whatshe had feared and thought impossible. She thrust her head far out andaddressed the driver.

  "Go as fast as you can, faster! and I'll give you twice what he gaveyou." The words rang so wildly to her own ears that she half expectedthe driver to peer down like an old bird of prey from his perch anddemand her reason. But he made no sound or sign. It may have been thatin his time he had heard even wilder requests than hers. He only senthis whip cracking forward to the ears of the lean horse, and the cabbegan to rattle like a mad thing.

  Flora leaned back with a sigh of relief. The mere sensation of beingborne along at such a rate, the sight of houses, lamp-posts, even peoplehere and there, flitting away from the eye, unable to interrupt hercourse, or even to glimpse her identity, gave her a feeling of safety.The more she was getting into the residence part of the city, the moredeserted the streets, the closer shut the windows of the houses, themore it seemed to her as if the night itself covered and abetted herflight. So swiftly she went it was only a wonder how the cab heldtogether. She had never traveled more rapidly in her light and silentcarriage. Now they whirled the corner and plunged at the steep rise of across street. Just above, over the crown of the hill, she saw the sky,moonless, blackish, spattered with stars. Then against it a littlefluttering shape like a sentinel wisp--the only living thing in sight.It was incredible, impossible, horrible that he should be there, infront of her, waiting for her, who had driven so fast--too fast, it hadseemed, for human foot to follow. By what unimaginable route had hetraveled? She was ready to believe he had flown over the housetops. Andabove all other horrors, why was he pursuing her?

  The carriage was abreast the Chinaman now, and immediately he took uphis trot, for a little while keeping up, dodging along between light andshadow, presently falling behind. At intervals she heard the patter,patter, patter of his footsteps following; at intervals she lost thesound, and shadows would engulf the figure, and she would wait in apanic for its reappearance. For she knew it was there somewhere, on oneside of the street or the other. But, oh, not to see it! To expect atany moment it might start up again--Heaven knew where, perhaps at hervery carriage window. Her unconscious hand was doubled to a fist uponher breast, fast closed upon the sapphire.

  With all her body braced, she leaned and looked far backward, and farforward, and now for a long time saw nothing. The distance was empty.The glare of arc-lights showed her the shadows of her own progress--theshadow of her vehicle shooting huge and misshapen now on the cobbles,now along a blank wall, wheels, body and driver, all lurching like one;now heaped on each other, now tenuously drawn out, now twistingthemselves into shapes the mind could not account for. For here,whirling the corner, the carriage seemed to wave an arm, and now betweenthe wheels, fast twinkling, she saw a pair of legs. She leaned andlooked, so mesmerized with this grotesque appearance that it scarcelytroubled her that all the way down the last long hill she knew it mustbe that a man was running at her wheel.

  The warm lights of her house were just before her, offering succor,stiffening courage. It would be but a dash from the door of the cab toher own door. There was no second course, once the cab stopped. She feltthat to lurk in its gloom would mean robbery, perhaps death. She thoughtwithout fear, but with an intense calculation. Her hand held the door atswing as the cab drew up. Before it should stop she must leap. Shegathered her skirts and sprang--sprang clean to the sidewalk. The stepsof her house rushed by her in her upward flight. Her bell pealed. Shecovered her eyes.

  For the moment before Shima opened the door there was nothing butdarkness and silence. She had never been so glad of anything in her lifeas of the kind, astute, yellow face he presented to her distressedappeal.

  "Shima," she panted, "pay the cab; and if there's any one else there saythat I'll call the police--no, no, send him away." There was no questionor hesitation in Shima's obedience. Through the glass of the door shewatched him descend upon his errand, until he disappeared over the edgeof the illumination of the vestibule. She waited, dimly aware of voicesgoing on beyond the curtains of the drawing-room, but all her listeningpower was concentrated on the silence without--a silence that remainedunbroken, and out of which Shima returned with the same imperturablecountenance.

  "He wants ten dollars."

  "Oh, yes, give him anything," Flora gasped. If that was all the Chinamanhad followed her for! But her relief was momentary, for instantly Shimawas back again.

  "I gave him ten dollars, the cabman."

  Now she gasped indeed. "Oh, the cabman! But the other one!" For aninstant Shima seemed to hesitate; glancing past her shoulder as if therewas something that he doubted behind her. Then as she still hung on hisanswer he brought it out in a lowered voice.

  "Madam, there was no one else there."