He raised his eyebrows. Finance he knew well. Otherwise he was a stupid man.
"I do not believe I follow you," he said nervously. "I was speaking of Virginia. She is so much better!"
I bowed to him politely, and, instead of entering the open door, descended the steps.
"You"re not coming in?" he exclaimed.
"Not yet," said I. "To tell you the truth, I am looking in that gra.s.s plot next door for something dropped there. I see that no one has disturbed the gra.s.s. It has not even been cut. h.e.l.lo! What"s this?"
I had reached down, picked up a metal cylinder and showed it to him.
"It looks like a rifle cartridge--one of those murderous steel-nosed bullet affairs," said he.
"Something even more dangerous!" said I, thrusting it into my pocket.
"Much more dangerous! Possibly you will believe that I am ungracious--rather odd as it were--not to mention its name."
He shook his head. The mask of the polite student of percents had returned; he became formally polite.
"Not at all," he answered, adjusting his black tie. "I had rather hoped you would stay to see my daughter."
"Another crisis prevents," I said, bowing at the door of my car. But the banker had turned his back.
"Where now, sir?" asked my chauffeur.
"The old Museum of Natural History."
"All cobblestones in those streets, sir," he said as we leaped forward again.
This was true. We fairly jounced our way to the old brownstone structure, which sat with such pathetic dignity on the square of discouraged gra.s.s, frowning at the surrounding tenements. The sign advertising the waxworks and "Collection of Criminology" still hung at the door of the lower floor.
"Tell me," said I to the freckled girl who sold admissions, "is the Man with the Rolling Eye still here?"
She put down her embroidery and removed a long end of red silk thread which she had been carrying on the tip of her tongue.
"I should certainly say not!" she answered. "He"s all wore out. They couldn"t repair him any more."
"The machine or the man?"
"Both," said she. "But they weren"t much of an attraction. Of course there wasn"t supposed to be any man--only the machine--the automaticon they called it. But it didn"t make enough money the last year or two to pay the repairs. The old man that run it was a swell chessplayer. The old man got sick and the machine got broken. Both were about at the end of the rope. So he went away three weeks ago and the machine is stored in the cellar now."
"Where did you say the old man lived?" I asked.
"I didn"t say. But I"ll write it down for you. It"s a scene-painting loft over by the river."
She scribbled on a slip of paper, "J. Lecompte, 5 East India Place."
"Thank you," I said.
"Um-m. You can"t fool me," said she. "You"re in the show business!"
This was a thrust of her curiosity, but I merely bowed and left her.
"Go home as quickly as you can," I whispered to the chauffeur. "Give Mr.
Estabrook, my guest, this slip of paper. Tell him to lose no time. Tell him to bring the revolver he will find in the top drawer of my desk!
Don"t wait for me. I"ll walk."
The man gazed at me stupidly a moment before he started the machine.
"He believes I am crazy," I said to myself as I saw him turn the corner.
"Whether or not he is right, the interview will be at least interesting."
You will agree with me that these words forecasted accurately.
CHAPTER II
IN THE PAINTED GARDEN
East India Place is not a well-known thoroughfare. In fact, it is a court, hidden between truck stables and concealed also by the boxes and bales of commission merchants. Even on a sunshiny day the dank bottom of this court is dark and smells as if it were under rather than on the earth. A warehouse occupies one side, the other presents several doorways, which might once have been the entrances to sailors" lodgings, but which now are plastered with the rude signs of junk dealers. The numbers on these houses were all even--2-4-8-10--which left me the conclusion that Number 5 must be the warehouse and that the scene-painting loft must be on the top floor of the grimy building.
Indeed, I could see that a skylight had been superimposed on the roof and my eye caught the sign at the entrance, "The Mohave Scenic Studios."
I began the ascent of boxed wooden stairways, musty with the odors of ships" cargoes. At the top a sign confronted me, "No Admittance Except on Business. This means You"; but beneath it in red, white, and blue paint, was the message, "Used for Storage. New Studio at 43 Barkiston Avenue."
I knocked. There was no answer. I tried the stump of a k.n.o.b; the door yielded. I found myself in a large room with rolls and rolls of canvas in piles and huge scenic back drops pendant from the high ceiling. A skylight above, with rotting curtains drawn across the square panes, threw a strange green glare over everything. A peculiar aromatic odor, such as is sometimes wafted over the footlights into the audience, gave the deserted place a theatrical flavor which was heightened by the presence of gilded papier-mache statuettes and a huge representation of the G.o.d Buddha leaning against the bare brick wall. A spider had spun a web above one of this G.o.d"s bare shoulders; it glinted in a chance ray of direct sunlight which had entered through a tear in the curtain overhead. Above me a staging held a kitchen chair, some fire pails, and several pots whose sides were smirched with the colors they contained.
The only sign of human life was the faint warm odor of pipe smoke.
Knowing, then, that some one beside myself was in the loft, I proceeded gingerly between two vast canvases which hung side by side, preparing myself on my soft-footed way down this aisle to see the man I sought as I emerged from the other end. I imagined I heard a nervous, suppressed cough, indicating that the other already knew of my invasion of his strange abode.
This was not the fact. For a moment, looking from the opening, I had ample opportunity, without being seen, to observe all that spread itself before me. A painted drop hung against the wall, upon which, in delicate colors of Italian blue and rich green, was stretched a vast, imposing, and beautiful view of the Gardens of Versailles, with a wealth of flowers in full bloom extending along the velvet greensward into the depth of the landscape, where, white and regal, walls and pillars rose toward the clear sky of spring. A modern grotesque had invaded this regal scene and forbidden ground, and had placed his cot, disordered with newspapers and ragged red blankets, so boldly in the foreground that at first sight the impropriety of his presence was shocking. I could see that the man sat upon his cot cross-legged; his back, pitifully thin under a spare white shirt, was turned toward me. With one sinewy, aged hand he fondled the wisps of faded hair upon his head; with the other he moved small objects over a flat board. He was a lonely monarch upon a throne of squalor; he was playing a solitary game of chess!
"The Sheik of Baalbec!" I whispered to myself.
The creature stopped, looked up at the skylight and its green curtains and drew a miserable sigh from the depths of his lungs. It was such a sigh that I could not restrain a shudder.
"Julianna," said I.
He drew his head down between his shoulders like a frightened turtle and held himself stiffly as one who has been doused with a pail of ice water. For several moments he did not move; when at last he turned around, his expression was patient rather than vicious, sad rather than terror-stricken.
"What do you want?" he said, and held his mouth open so that he, too, seemed like an automaton, the springs of which had failed.
The pause gave me the opportunity to observe that he was not the man with the gold fillings. Indeed, the only part of him which seemed well preserved--which, as it were, he had saved from the wreck--was a row of white, even teeth!
"What do you want?" he repeated. "I have never seen you before. I know no reason for your speaking a word to me."
"Your daughter--" I began.
"I have no daughter," he cried, his eyes blazing with sudden pa.s.sion.