"I"d love you now if you were to a.s.sume the shape of a Chinese dragon,"
I said seriously, "--or the Sheik of Baalbec."
The truth was that I had almost forgotten this latter creature, the automaton. Apparently she had, too, for at first a puzzled look came to her eyes, then she smiled up at me with a bit of her own individual coquetry.
"You are making love this morning?" she said in a gay voice. Yet it seemed to me that in it was a trace of eagerness, shrewdly directed toward a concealed purpose.
"I am going to ask you to go away, Jerry," she went on timidly, but still smiling.
"Go away? When? For what purpose?" I exclaimed.
"Just go away for me--for my sake," she answered, straightening her body, raising her head, and looking squarely at me with some of her old strength. "You can go to live in a hotel. You can explain that you are forced to do so for some business reason. You can say that I have gone away."
She must have seen the flush of my anger, for she raised her hand.
"Don"t!" she pleaded. "I know very well how unreasonable I may seem. But if I have earned any grat.i.tude or respect or love from you, just give me what I ask now and give it to me blindly--without question."
Her eyes held my own as she said these words and I knew she had cast her spell over me.
"What do you propose to do for these three weeks?" I asked roughly.
"I shall stay in this house," she answered, s.p.a.cing her words. "Margaret will stay, too. The rest of the servants I shall send away. But of this I want to be sure--you must not come to find me for three weeks. G.o.d only knows what would happen if you did."
"You are insane!" I cried out, with my hand gripping her round wrist.
"It"s that which has hung over us."
She shook her head.
"Worse," said she.
Then, as if to a.s.sure me that she had not lost her reason, she recalled the months which had just gone and described, as I could not, the change in our home, our life, ourselves.
"It is for you!" she broke out finally, as if she were no longer able to be calm. "For you and for our future I am begging you to do what I ask."
"Tell me this," said I, stirred by seeing her tremble so violently. "Has something come to you out of the past?"
"Yes," she said, reaching behind her for the wall. "Ask nothing more. It has come out of the old, old past. For the love of all that is good, promise to do as I say."
"And then?" said I.
"Come back to me. I shall be here--then."
I bowed my head.
"On your word of honor," she commanded.
"On my word of honor," said I, and turned away.
I had scarcely done so, however, before I felt her arms about me, the impact and the clinging of her body. Close to me, plucking at my fingers, my sleeves, my wrist, her body shaking with her sobs, she covered me with caresses like those given at some parting for eternity.
"You--are not--in danger of death!" I exclaimed, holding her away from me at arm"s length.
"No, I cannot believe that," she said quietly. "Such as I am, I shall be when you come back."
With these words she pushed me gently from the room; I found myself looking into the broad white panel of a closed door. I stood there a moment, dazed, then going to my chamber, I, with my own hands, packed a large kit bag, preparing to do as she had asked. It was only after I had reflected on my promise that I went again to speak with her. I knocked.
There was no answer. I tried the latch. The door was locked.
Without eating my breakfast and with a strange conflict between my trust in my wife and the memory of my experiences since I had known her, I left the house and have not pa.s.sed its threshold, though it is two weeks to-morrow morning since I left it.
Do you wonder, sir, that I have suffered all the torments which anxiety can devise or imagination, with its swift picture-film, may unroll before one"s eyes? I have stifled as best I could these uncertain terrors. By day, when I have plunged into my work at the office, at times I have been able to shut my mind to the everlasting rehearsal around and around, over and over again, of the facts which I have told you to-night; but when night has come, I am the prey of my own thoughts.
For six days, in spite of my exaggerated fear of scandal, I have prowled like a ghost before my own house, lurking behind trees, watching my own door like a ten-dollar-a-day detective. Dodging the policeman who would know me, I have kept my eyes for hours on the dim light that sometimes burns in my wife"s room, and when I have seen the shadow of some one pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing behind the drawn shade, I have felt my heart in my throat, and have scarcely been able to restrain myself from calling out into the night air, "Julianna! Julianna!"
Finally, I must tell you one thing more. I had believed that perhaps the crisis which had come to her had done so independently of any personality but mine or hers. I was wrong. To-night, unable to remain inactive any longer, and by the acc.u.mulation of restraint made desperate, I rung up my house on the telephone. No answer was returned.
The feeling that my wife, in danger, was calling upon me, swept over me until, had I been open to such beliefs, I would have felt sure that across the affection and sympathy between us, as across wires, the message came.
I walked hastily from the hotel into the park, taking the path which I had used in the pleasant June days when I had met her at the Monument.
You know the kind of night it has been. Therefore when I reached the border of trees opposite my house, I hardly thought it necessary to seek the screen of the shrubbery; the arc lights were throwing the dancing shadows of tree limbs across the pavement, the rush of the wind drowned the noise of footsteps, and the street was deserted, I thought, except for the clouds of whirling dust that pa.s.sed downtown like so many huge and ghostly pedestrians. I saw that a dim light shone through her blinds and that the house was the picture of peace, suggesting that the walls contained comfort, happiness, and the quiet of a peaceful family. So the fronts of houses lie to us!
At the very moment that this thought came, I saw from my position under the shadow of a spreading oak, which has not yet dropped its leaves, that I was not the only person who was observing the light behind the blinds. A figure was standing not more than a hundred feet away from me, peering out from beyond one of the light poles. It wore a vizored cap, I thought, and its head rolled this way and that on top of its spare, bent, and agile body. Now and then, however, it ceased this grotesque movement to gaze up at the window. One would have said that this creature was less a man than an ape.
I am not a coward. "Here," thought I, "is a tangible factor. My word of honor to Julianna is not broken if I seize this customer, whatever he may be, and make him explain the part he is acting." I stepped forward immediately, but he saw me before I had made two steps. From my bearing and the place where I had concealed myself, he knew at once, I suppose, that I had been watching him, for, turning with a swift motion, he plunged into the shrubs and evergreens behind him. That the thing was as frightened as a rabbit, there can be no doubt; the single little cry it gave forth was not a scream. You would have called it a squeal! In a jiffy I was after him, tearing through the branches among which, with a sinuous twisting of his body, he had just slid; a moment later I reached the open lawn again. The man had vanished.
I knew well enough that he was hiding, probably flattened on the ground, among the evergreens. At another time, on a quiet evening, listening for his movements or even his breathing, might have told me where he lay, but now the wind and the rattle of dead leaves made it necessary for me to use my eyes in my search. Therefore I went back through the bushes, kicking at dark shadows with my foot, my heart thumping with the excitement of the hunt.
As I reached the street again, I looked up toward my house, and there, at the front door, I saw a crack widen and a black figure of a man come out and down the steps. It crossed the street, and when it had gone into the park, I followed it. You know what happened; this second man was you.
And now I ask you, Doctor, man to man--For G.o.d"s sake, tell me what you know!
BOOK III
THE DOCTOR"S LIMOUSINE
CHAPTER I
A SHADOW ON THE CURTAIN
Such was Jermyn Estabrook"s story. I have tried, in repeating it, not only to include all the details given by this desperate young man, but to suggest also the coldness and accuracy of his speech. Why? Because the very manner of narration is indicative of the man"s character. He belongs to the dry, dessicated, and abominably respectable cla.s.s of our society. Pah! I have no patience with them. They live apart, believing themselves rarities; the world is content to let them do it, because theirs is a segregation of stupidity. And Estabrook, though he had fine qualities, belonged to them.
Nothing could have indicated this more clearly than the emphasis he put on his fear of scandal, the smug way he spoke of his word of honor, and the self-conscious blush that came into his handsome face when he mentioned the name of Estabrook. Why, even the menace to his beautiful Julianna was not quite sufficient to cause this egotist to forget his duties toward himself! So if he had not acted with such n.o.bility of spirit during the remainder of our adventures begun that night, I could not sit here now and write that I learned to be very fond of him.
At any rate, Estabrook asked me what I knew and I told him all that I have written--about Virginia, that she seemed to feel the existence of something the other side of her bedroom wall, about MacMechem"s notes on the case, the game of life and death I was playing, my conversation with the old servant, and for full measure, I told him where I had learned to place a blow behind a gentleman"s ear. It is necessary to deal with men as excited as Estabrook without showing the nervousness that one may feel one"s self.
When I had finished, he jumped up from his chair, and, clasping his hands behind his back, in the manner of lawyers, he walked twice across the room.