Mrs. Manners drew something indefinite from her bag and put it back again, and looked vaguely at St. George.
"Your voice reminds me so much of my brother, younger," she observed, her eyes already straying to the literature for distribution.
With soft exclamatory twitters the Readers" Guild thanked St.
George, and Miss Bella Bliss Utter, who was of womankind who clasp their hands when they praise, stood thus beside him until he took his leave. The woman in the red waist summoned an attendant to show him back down the long corridor.
At the grated door within the entrance St. George found the warden in stormy conference with a pale blond youth in spectacles.
"Impossible," the warden was saying bluntly, "I know you. I know your voice. You called me up this morning from the _New York Sentinel_ office, and I told you then--"
"But, my dear sir," expostulated the pale blond youth, waving a music roll, "I do a.s.sure you--"
"What he says is quite true, Warden," St. George interposed courteously, "I will vouch for him. I have just been singing for the Readers" Guild myself."
The warden dropped back with a grudging apology and brows of tardy suspicion, and the old man blinked his buckle eyes.
"Gentlemen," said St. George, "good morning."
Outside the door, with its panels decorated in positive prohibitions, he eagerly unfolded the precious paper. It bore a single name and address: Tabnit, 19 McDougle Street, New York.
CHAPTER III
ST. GEORGE AND THE LADY
St. George lunched leisurely at his hotel. Upon his return from Westchester he had gone directly to McDougle Street to be a.s.sured that there was a house numbered 19. Without difficulty he had found the place; it was in the row of old iron-balconied apartment houses a few blocks south of Washington Square, and No. 19 differed in no way from its neighbours even to the noisy children, without toys, tumbling about the sunken steps and dark bas.e.m.e.nt door. St. George contented himself with walking past the house, for the mere a.s.surance that the place existed dictated his next step.
This was to write a note to Mrs. Medora Hastings, Miss Holland"s aunt. The note set forth that for reasons which he would, if he might, explain later, he was interested in the woman who had recently made an attempt upon her niece"s life; that he had seen the woman and had obtained an address which he was confident would lead to further information about her. This address, he added, he preferred not to disclose to the police, but to Mrs. Hastings or Miss Holland herself, and he begged leave to call upon them if possible that day. He despatched the note by Rollo, whom he instructed to deliver it, not at the desk, but at the door of Mrs.
Hastings" apartment, and to wait for an answer. He watched with pleasure Rollo"s soft departure, recalling the days when he had sent a messenger boy to some inaccessible threshold, himself stamping up and down in the cold a block or so away to await the boy"s return.
Rollo was back almost immediately. Mrs. Hastings and Miss Holland were not at home. St. George eyed his servant severely.
"Rollo," he said, "did you go to the door of their apartment?"
"No, sir," said Rollo stiffly, "the elevator boy told me they was out, sir."
"Showing," thought St. George, "that a valet and a gentleman is a very poor newspaper man."
"Now go back," he said pleasantly, "go up in the elevator to their door. If they are not in, wait in the lower hallway until they return. Do you get that? Until they return."
"You"ll want me back by tea-time, sir?" ventured Rollo.
"Wait," St. George repeated, "until they return. At three. Or six.
Or nine o"clock. Or midnight."
"Very good, sir," said Rollo impa.s.sively, "it ain"t always wise, sir, for a man to trust to his own judgment, sir, asking your pardon. His judgment," he added, "may be a bit of the ape left in him, sir."
St. George smiled at this evolutionary pearl and settled himself comfortably by the open fire to await Rollo"s return. It was after three o"clock when he reappeared. He brought a note and St. George feverishly tore it open.
"Whom did you see? Were they civil to you?" he demanded.
"I saw a old lady, sir," said Rollo irreverently. "She didn"t say a word to me, sir, but what she didn"t say was civiler than many people"s language. There"s a great deal in manner, sir," declaimed Rollo, brushing his hat with his sleeve, and his sleeve with his handkerchief, and shaking the handkerchief meditatively over the coals.
St. George read the note at a glance and with unspeakable relief.
They would see him. A refusal would have delayed and annoyed him just then, in the flood-tide of his hope.
"My Dear Mr. St. George," the note ran. "My niece is not at home, and I can not tell how your suggestion will be received by her, though it is most kind. I may, however, answer for myself that I shall be glad to see you at four o"clock this afternoon.
"Very truly yours, "MEDORA HASTINGS."
Grateful for her evident intention to waste no time, St. George dressed and drove to the Boris, punctually sending up his card at four o"clock. At once he was ushered to Mrs. Hastings" apartment.
St. George entered her drawing-room incuriously. Three years of entering drawing-rooms which he never thereafter was to see had robbed him of that sensation of indefinable charm which for many a strange room never ceases to yield. He had found far too many tables upholding nothing which one could remember, far too many pictures that returned his look, and rugs that seemed to have been selected arbitrarily and because there was none in stock that the owner really liked. He was therefore pleasantly surprised and puzzled by the room which welcomed him. The floor was tiled in curious blocks, strangely hieroglyphed, as if they had been taken from old tombs.
Over the fireplace was set a panel of the same stone, which, by the thickness of the tiles, formed a low shelf. On this shelf and on tables and in a high window was the strangest array of objects that St. George had ever seen. There were small busts of soft rose stone, like blocks of coral. There was a statue or two of some indefinable white material, glistening like marble and yet so soft that it had been indented in several places by accidental pressure. There were fans of strangely-woven silk, with sticks of carven rock-crystal, and hand mirrors of polished copper set in frames of gems that he did not recognize. Upon the wall were mended bits of purple tapestry, embroidered or painted or woven in singular patterns of flora and birds that St. George could not name. There were rolls of parchment, and vases of rock-crystal, and a little apparatus, most delicately poised, for weighing unknown, delicate things; and jars and cups without handles, all baked of a soft pottery having a nap like the down of a peach. Over the windows hung curtains of lace, woven by hands which St. George could not guess, in patterns of such freedom and beauty as western looms never may know. On the floor and on the divans were spread strange skins, some marked like peac.o.c.ks, some patterned like feathers and like seaweed, all in a soft fur that was like silk.
Mingled with these curios were the ordinary articles of a cultivated household. There were many books, good pictures, furniture with simple lines, a tea-table that almost ministered of itself, a work-basket filled with "violet-weaving" needle-work, and a gossipy clock with well-bred chimes. St. George was enormously attracted by the room which could harbour so many pagan delights without itself falling their victim. The air was fresh and cool and smelled of the window primroses.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
In a few moments Mrs. Hastings entered, and if St. George had been bewildered by the room he was still more amazed by the appearance of his hostess. She was utterly unlike the atmosphere of her drawing-room. She was a bustling, commonplace little creature, with an expressionless face, indented rather than molded in features. Her plump hands were covered with jewels, but for all the richness of her gown she gave the impression of being very badly dressed; things of jet and metal bobbed and ticked upon her, and her side-combs were continually falling about. She sat on the sofa and looked at the seat which St. George was to have and began to talk--all without taking the slightest heed of him or permitting him to mention the _Evening Sentinel_ or his errand. If St. George had been painted purple he felt sure that she would have acted quite the same.
Personality meant nothing to her.
"Now this distressing matter, Mr. St. George," began Mrs. Hastings, "of this frightful mulatto woman. I didn"t see her myself--no, I had stopped in on the first floor to visit my lawyer"s wife who was ill with neuralgia, and I didn"t see the creature. If I had been with my niece I dare say it wouldn"t have occurred. That"s what I always say to my niece. I always say, "Olivia, nothing _need_ occur to vex one.
It always happens because of pure heedlessness." Not that I accuse my own niece of heedlessness in this particular. It was the elevator boy who was heedless. That is the trouble with life in a great city. Every breath you draw is always dependent on somebody else"s doing his duty, and when you consider how many people habitually neglect their duty it is a wonder--I always say that to Olivia--it is a wonder that anybody is alive to _do_ a duty when it presents itself. "Olivia," I always say, "n.o.body needs to die." And I really believe that they nearly all do die out of pure heedlessness. Well, and so this frightful mulatto creature: you know her, I understand?"
Mrs. Hastings leaned back and consulted St. George through her tortoise-sh.e.l.l gla.s.ses, tilting her head high to keep them on her nose and perpetually putting their gold chain over her ear, which perpetually pulled out her side-combs.
"I saw her this morning," St. George said. "I went up to the Reformatory in Westchester, and I spoke with her."
"Mercy!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Hastings, "I wonder she didn"t tear your eyes out. Did they have her in a cage or in a cell? What was the creature about?"
"She was in a missionary meeting at the moment," St. George explained, smiling.
"Mercy!" said Mrs. Hastings in exactly the same tone. "Some trick, I expect. That"s what I warn Olivia: "So few things nowadays are done through necessity or design." Nearly everything is a trick. Every invention is a trick--a cultured trick, one might say. Murder is a trick, I suppose, to a murderer. That"s why civilization is bad for morals, don"t you think? Well, and so she talked with you?"
"No, Mrs. Hastings," said St. George, "she did not say one word. But she wrote something, and that is what I have come to bring you."
"What was it--some charm?" cried Mrs. Hastings. "Oh, n.o.body knows what that kind of people may do. I"ll meet any one face to face, but these juggling, incantation individuals appal me. I have a brother who travels in the Orient, and he tells me about hideous things they do--raising wheat and things," she vaguely concluded.
"Ah!" said St. George quickly, "you have a brother--in the Orient?"
"Oh, yes. My brother Otho has traveled abroad I don"t know how many years. We have a great many stamps. I can"t begin to p.r.o.nounce all the names," the lady a.s.sured him.
"And this brother--is he your niece, Miss Holland"s father?" St.
George asked eagerly.