He covered his face with his hands, strode around the room, gazing wildly out over the city, trying to listen to the clanging of the surface cars, the rumble of the overhead railway in the distance, the breaking of the long, ceaseless waves of human feet upon the pavement. It was useless. No effort of his will could keep from his brain the haunting memory of those final moments--the man"s face, handsome and well-satisfied at first, the careless greeting, the sudden change, the surprise, the apprehension, the ghastly fear, the agony! He heard the low, gurgling shriek of terror; he looked into the eyes with the fear of h.e.l.l before them! Then he heard the splash of the black, filthy water.
There was a cry. It was several seconds before he realised that it had broken from his lips. He looked around him like a hunted creature. There was another terror now--the gloomy court with its ugly, miserable paraphernalia--the death, uglier still, death in disgrace, a sordid, ghastly thing! And in his brain, too, there was so much dawning, so many wonderful ideas craving for fulfilment. These few months had been months of marvellous development. The power of the writer had seemed to grow, hour by hour. His brain was full of fancies, exquisite fancies some of them. It was a new world growing up around him and within him, too beautiful a world to leave. Yet, in those breathless moments, fear was the dominant sensation. He felt a coward to his fingertips...
He walked up and down the room feverishly, as a man might pace a prison in the first few moments of captivity. There was no escape! If he disappeared again, it would only rivet suspicion the more closely. There was no place to which he could fly, no shelter save on the other side of the life which he had just begun to love. His physical condition began to alarm him. He felt his forehead by accident and found it damp with sweat.
His heart was beating irregularly with a spasmodic vigour which brought pain. He caught sight of his terror-stricken face in the looking-gla.s.s, and the craving to escape from his frenzied solitude overcame all his other resolutions. He rushed to the telephone, spoke with Phoebe, waited breathlessly whilst she fetched his mistress to the instrument.
"I want to see you," he begged, as soon as he was conscious of her presence at the other end. "I want to see you at once."
"Has anything happened?" she asked quickly.
"Yes!" he almost groaned. "I can"t tell you--"
"I will be with you in ten minutes," she promised.
He set the receiver down. Those ten minutes were surely the longest which had ever ticked their way into Eternity! And then she came. He heard the lift stop and his door open. There was a moment"s breathless silence as their eyes met, then a little gathering together of the lines of her forehead, a half querulous, half sympathetic smile. She shook her head at him.
"You"ve had one of those silly nervous attacks," she declared. "Tell me at once why?"
"Dane is back--I saw him on the pavement this morning!" he exclaimed. "He has been to England to find out!"
She made him sit down and seated herself by his side.
"Listen," she said, "Dane came back on the _Orinoco_, the day before yesterday. I saw his name in the paper. If his voyage to England had been a success, which it could not have been, you would have heard from him before now."
"I didn"t think of that," he muttered.
"I have never asked you," she went on, "to tell me exactly what happened behind there. I don"t want to know. Only I have a consciousness--I had from the first, when you began to talk to me about it--that your fears were exaggerated. If you have been allowed to remain safe all this time, you will be safe always. I feel it, and I am always right in these things. Now use your own common sense. Tell me truthfully, don"t you think it is very improbable that anything could be discovered?"
"That anything could be proved," he admitted eagerly, "yes!"
"Then don"t be silly. No one is likely to make accusations and attempt a case unless they had a definite end in view. We are safe even from the _Elletania_ people. Mr. Raymond Greene has ceased to talk of your wonderful resemblance to Douglas Romilly. Phoebe--the only one who could really know--will never open her lips. Now take me for a little walk. We will look in the shops in Fifth Avenue and lunch at the Ritz-Carlton. Go and brush yourself and make yourself look respectable. I"ll have a cigarette and read the paper.... No, I won"t, I"ll look over these loose sheets and see how you are getting on."
He disappeared into his room for a few minutes. When he returned she was entirely engrossed. She looked up at him with something almost of reverence in her face.
"When did you write this?" she asked.
"Yesterday, most of it," he answered. "There is more of it--I haven"t finished yet. When you send me away this afternoon, I shall go on. That is only the beginning. I have a great idea dawning."
"What you have written is wonderful," she said simply. "It makes me feel almost humble, makes me feel that the very best actress in the world remains only an interpretress. Yes, I can say those words you have written, but they can never be mine. I want to be something more than an intelligent parrot, Philip. Why can"t you teach me to feel and think things like that?"
"You!" he murmured, as he took her arm and led her to the door. "You could feel all the sweetest and most wonderful things in heaven. The writer"s knack is only a slight gift. I put on paper what lives in your heart."
She raised her head, and he kissed her lips. For a moment he held her quite quietly. Her arms encircled him. The perfume of her clothes, her hair, her warm, gentle touch, seemed like a strong sedative. If she said that he was safe, he must be. It was queer how so often at these times their s.e.xes seemed reversed; it was he who felt that womanly desire for shelter and protection which she so amply afforded him. She patted his cheek.
"Now for our little walk," she said. "Open the windows and let out all these bad fancies of yours. And listen," she went on, as they stepped out of the lift a moment or two later, and pa.s.sed through the hall towards the pavement, "not a word about our own problem. We are going to talk nonsense. We are going to be just two light-hearted children in this wonderful city, gazing at the sights and taking all she has to offer us.
I love it, you know. I love the noise of it. It isn"t a distant, stifled roar like London. There"s a harsh, clarion-like note about it, like metal striking upon metal. And the smell of New York--there isn"t any other city like it! When we get into Fifth Avenue I am going to direct your attention to the subject of hats. Have you ever bought a woman"s hat, Philip?"
"Never," he answered, truthfully enough.
"Then you are going to this morning, or rather you are going to help me to choose one," she declared, "and in a very few moments, too. There is a little place almost underground in Fifth Avenue there, and a Frenchwoman--oh, she is so French!--and all her a.s.sistants have black hair and wear untidy, shapeless clothes and velvet slippers. It isn"t New York at all, but I love it, and I let them put their name on the programme. They really don"t charge me more than twice as much as they ought to for my hats. We go down here," she added, descending some steps, "and if you make eyes at any of the young women I shall bring you straight out again."
They spent half an hour choosing a hat and nearly two hours over lunch.
It was late in the afternoon before she dropped him at his rooms. Not a word had they spoken of Sylva.n.u.s Power or their future, but Philip was a different man. Only, as he turned and said good-by, his voice trembled.
"I can"t say thank you," he muttered, "but you know!"...
The lift was too slow for him. He opened his door with almost breathless haste. He only paused to light a cigarette and change his coat and wheel his table round so as to catch the afternoon light more perfectly. Then, with his brain teeming with fancies, he plunged into his work.
CHAPTER XII
Philip let the pen slip at last from his tired fingers. The light had failed. He had been writing with straining eyes, almost in the darkness.
But there was something else. Had it been fancy or ... This time there could be no mistake. He had not heard the lift stop, but some one was knocking softly at the door, softly but persistently. He turned his head.
The room seemed filled with shadows. He had written for hours, and he was conscious that his limbs were stiff. The sun had gone down in a cloudy sky, and the light had faded. He could scarcely distinguish the articles of furniture at the further end of the room. For some reason or other he felt tongue-tied. Then, without any answer from him to this mysterious summons, the handle of the door slowly turned. As he sat there he saw it pushed open. A woman, wrapped in a long coat, stepped inside, closing it firmly behind her. She stood peering around the room. There was something familiar and yet unfamiliar in her height, her carriage. He waited, spellbound, for her voice.
"Douglas!" she exclaimed. "Ah, there you are!"
The words seemed to die away, unuttered, upon his lips. He suddenly thought that he was choking. He stared at her blankly. It was impossible!
She came a step further into the room. Her hand was stretched out accusingly.
"So I"ve found you, have I, Douglas?" she cried, and there was a note of bitter triumph in her words, "found you after all these months! Aren"t you terrified? Aren"t you afraid? No wonder you sit there, shrinking away! Do you know what I have come for?"
He tried to speak, but his lips were as powerless to frame words as his limbs were to respond to his desire for movement. This was the one thing which he had not foreseen.
"You broke your promise," she went on, raising her voice a little in pa.s.sionate reproach. "You left me there alone to face dismissal, without a penny, and slipped off yourself to America. You never even came in to wish me good-by. Why? Tell me why you went without coming near me?... You won"t, eh? You daren"t. Be a man. Out with it. I am here, and I know the truth."
For the first time some definite sound came from his lips.
"Beatrice!" he gasped.
"Ah!" she mocked. "You can remember my name, then? Douglas, I knew that you were a bad man. I knew that when you told me how you meant to cheat your creditors, how you meant to escape over here on the pretext of business, and bring all the money you could sc.r.a.pe together. I knew that, and yet I was willing to come with you, and I should have come. But there was one thing I didn"t reckon upon. I didn"t know that you had the heart or the courage to be a murderer!"
The little cry that broke from his lips was stifled even before it was uttered.
"I shall never forgive you!" she sobbed. "I never want to touch your bloodstained fingers! I have forgotten that I ever loved you. You"re horrible--do you hear?--horrible! And yet, I don"t mean to be left to starve. That"s why I"ve followed you. You"re afraid I am going to give you up to justice? Well, I don"t know. It depends.... Turn on the lights.
I want to see you. Do you hear? I want to see how you can face me. I want to see how the memory of that afternoon has dealt with you. Do as I tell you. Don"t stand there glowering at me."
He crossed the room with stumbling footsteps.
"You"ve learnt to stoop, anyhow," she went on. "You"re thinner, too.... My G.o.d!"
The room was suddenly flooded with light. Philip, rigid and ghastly, was looking at her from the other side of the table. She held up her hands as though to shut out the sight of him.
"Philip!" she shrieked. "Philip!... Oh, my G.o.d!"
Her eyes were lit with horror as she swayed upon her feet. For a moment she seemed about to collapse. Then she groped her way towards the door and stood there, clinging to the handle. Slowly she looked around over her shoulder, her face as white as death. She moistened her lips with her tongue, her eyes glared at him. Behind, her brain seemed to be working.
Her first spasm of inarticulate fear pa.s.sed.