At the Waldorf he found himself greeted with unexpected cordiality. The young gentleman to whom he applied, after some hesitation, for a room, stretched out his hand and welcomed him to America.
"So you are Mr. Romilly!" he exclaimed. "Well, that"s good. We"ve got your room--Number 602, on the ninth floor."
"Ninth floor!" Philip gasped.
"If you"d like to be higher up we can change you," the young man continued amiably. "Been several people here enquiring for you. A young man from the "Boot and Shoe Trades Reporter" was here only half an hour ago, and here"s a cable. No mail yet."
He handed the key to a small boy and waved Philip away. The small boy proved fully equal to his mission.
"You just step this way, sir," he invited encouragingly. "Those packages of yours will be all right. You don"t need to worry about them."
He led the way down a corridor streaming with human beings, into a lift from which it appeared to Philip that he was shot on to the ninth floor, along a thickly-carpeted way into a good-sized and comfortable bedroom, with bathroom attached.
"Your things will be up directly, sir," the small boy promised, holding out his hand. "I"ll see after them myself."
Philip expressed his grat.i.tude in a satisfactory manner and stood for a few moments at the window. Although it was practically his first glimpse of New York, the wonders of the panorama over which he looked failed even to excite his curiosity. The clanging of the surface cars, the roar and clatter of the overhead railway, the hooting of streams of automobiles, all apparently being driven at breakneck speed, alien sounds though they were, fell upon deaf ears. He could neither listen nor observe. Every second"s delay fretted him. His plans were all made. Everything depended upon their being carried out now without the slightest hitch. He walked a dozen times to the door, waiting for his luggage, and when at last it arrived he was on the point of using the telephone. He feed the linen-coated porters and dismissed them as rapidly as possible. Then he ransacked the trunks until he found, amidst a pile of fashionable clothing, a quiet and inconspicuous suit of dark grey. In the bathroom he hastily changed his clothes, selected an ordinary Homburg hat, and filled a small leather case with various papers. He was on the point of leaving the room when his eyes fell upon the cable. He hesitated for a moment, gazed at the superscription, shrugged his shoulders, and tore it open. He moved to the window and read it slowly, word for word:
"Just seen Henshaw. Most disturbing interview. Tells me you have had notice to reduce overdraft by February 1st. Absolutely declines any further advances. Payments coming in insufficient meet wages and current liabilities. No provision for 4th bills, amounting sixteen thousand pounds. Have wired London for accountant. Await your instructions urgently. Suggest you cable back the twenty thousand pounds lying our credit New York. Please reply. Very worried. Potts."
Word by word, Philip read the cable twice over. Then it fluttered from his fingers on to the table. It told its own story beyond any shadow of a mistake. His cousin"s great wealth was a fiction. The business to which his own fortune and the whole of his grandfather"s money had been devoted, was even now tottering. He remembered the rumours he had heard of Douglas" extravagance, his establishment in London, the burden of his college debts. And then a further light flashed in upon him. Twenty thousand pounds in America!--lying there, too, for Douglas under a false name! He drew out one of the doc.u.ments which he had packed and glanced at it more carefully. Then he replaced it, a little dazed. Douglas had planned to leave England, then, with this crisis looming over him. Why?
Philip for a moment sat down on the arm of an easy-chair. A grim sense of humour suddenly parted his lips. He threw back his head and laughed.
Douglas Romilly had actually been coming to America to disappear! It was incredible but it was true.
He left the cable carefully open upon the dressing-table, and, picking up the small leather case, left the room. He reached the lift, happily escaping the observation of the young lady seated at her desk, and descended into the hall. Once amongst the crowd of people who thronged the corridors, he found it perfectly simple to leave the hotel by one of the side entrances. He walked to the corner of the street and drew a little breath. Then he lit a cigarette and strolled along Broadway, curiously light-hearted, his spirits rising at every step. He was free for ever from that other hateful personality. Mr. Douglas Romilly, of the Douglas Romilly Shoe Company, had paid his brief visit to America and pa.s.sed on.
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
After a fortnight of his new life, Philip took stock of himself and his belongings. In the first place, then, he owned a new name, taken bodily from certain doc.u.ments which he had brought with him from England.
Further, as Mr. Merton Ware, he was the monthly tenant of a small but not uncomfortable suite of rooms on the top story of a residential hotel in the purlieus of Broadway. He had also, apparently, been a collector of newspapers of certain dates, all of which contained some such paragraph as this:
DOUGLAS ROMILLY, WEALTHY ENGLISH BOOT MANUFACTURER, DISAPPEARS FROM THE WALDORF ASTORIA HOTEL. WALKS OUT OF HIS ROOM WITHIN AN HOUR OF LANDING AND HAS NOT BEEN HEARD OF SINCE. DOWN TOWN HAUNTS SEARCHED. FOUL PLAY FEARED.
SUPERINTENDENT SHIPMAN DECLARES HIMSELF BAFFLED.
Early on Monday morning, the police of the city were invited to investigate a case of curious disappearance. Mr. Douglas Romilly, an English shoe manufacturer, who travelled out from England on board the _Elletania_, arrived at the Waldorf Hotel at four o"clock on Sat.u.r.day afternoon and was shown to the reservation made for him. Within an hour he was enquired for by several callers, who were shown to his room without result. The apartment was found to be empty and nothing has since been seen or heard of Mr. Romilly. The room a.s.signed to him, which could only have been occupied for a few minutes, has been locked up and the keys handed to the police. A considerable amount of luggage is in their possession, and certain doc.u.ments of a somewhat curious character.
From cables received early this afternoon, it would appear that the Douglas Romilly Shoe Company, one of the oldest established firms in England, is in financial difficulties.
Then there was a paragraph in a paper of later date:
NO NEWS OF DOUGLAS ROMILLY.
The police have been unable to discover any trace of the missing Englishman. From further cables to hand, it appears that he was in possession of a considerable sum of money, which must have been on his person at the time of disappearance, and it is alleged that there was also a large amount, with which he had intended to make purchases for his business, standing to his credit at a New York bank. Nothing has since been discovered, however, amongst his belongings, of the slightest financial value, nor does any bank in New York admit holding a credit on behalf of the missing man.
"Perhaps it is time," Philip murmured, "that these were destroyed."
He tore the newspapers into pieces and threw them into his waste-basket.
On his writing-table were forty or fifty closely written pages of ma.n.u.script. In his pocketbook were sixteen hundred dollars, and a doc.u.ment indicating a credit for a very much larger amount at the United Bank of New York, in favor of Merton Ware and another. The remainder of his belongings were negligible. He stood at the window and looked out across the city, the city into whose labyrinths he was so eager to penetrate--the undiscovered country. By day and night its voices were in his ears, the rattle and roar of the overhead railway, the clanging of the street cars, the heavy traffic, the fainter but never ceasing foot-fall of the mult.i.tudes. He had sat there before dawn and watched the queer, pinky-white light steal with ever widening fingers through the darkness, heard the yawn of the city as it seemed to shiver and tremble before the battle of the day. At twilight he had watched the lights spring up one by one, at first like pin p.r.i.c.ks in the distance, growing and widening until the grotesque shapes of the buildings from which they sprung had faded into nothingness, and there was left only a velvet curtain of strangely-lit stars. At a giddy distance below he could trace the blaze of Broadway, the blue lights flashing from the electric wires as the cable cars rushed back and forth, the red and violet glimmer of the sky signs. He knew it all so well, by morning, by noon and night; in rainstorm, storms which he had watched come up from oceanwards in drifting clouds of vapour; and in sunshine, clear, brilliant sunshine, a little hard and austere, to his way of thinking, and unseasonable.
"A week," he muttered. "She said a week. Tonight I will go out."
He looked at himself in the gla.s.s. He wore no longer the well-cut clothes of Mr. Douglas Romilly"s Saville Row tailor, but a ready-made suit of Schmitt & Mayer"s business reach-me-downs, an American felt hat and square-toed shoes.
"She said a week," he repeated. "It"s a fortnight to-day. I"ll go to the restaurant at the corner. I must find out for myself what all this noise means, what the city has to say."
He turned towards the door and then stopped short. For almost the first time since he had taken up his quarters here, the lift had stopped outside. There was a brief pause, then his bell rang. For a moment Philip hesitated. Then he stepped forward and opened the door, looking out enquiringly at his caller.
"You Mr. Merton Ware?"
He admitted the fact briefly. His visitor was a young woman dressed in a rather shabby black indoor dress, over which she wore an ap.r.o.n. She was without either hat or gloves. Her fingers were stained with purple copying ink, and her dark hair was untidily arranged.
"I live two stories down below," she announced, handing him a little card. "Miss Martha Grimes--that"s my name--typewriter and stenographer, you see. The waiter who brings our meals told me he thought you were some way literary, so I just stepped up to show you my prospectus. If you"ve any typewriting you want doing, I"m on the spot, and I don"t know as you"d get it done much cheaper anywhere else--or better."
There was nothing particularly ingratiating about Miss Martha Grimes, but, with the exception of a coloured waiter, she happened to be the first human being with whom Philip had exchanged a word for several days.
He felt disinclined to hurry her away.
"Come in," he invited, holding the door open. "So you do typing, eh? What sort of a machine do you use?"
"Remington," she answered. "It"s a bit knocked about--a few of the letters, I mean--but I"ve got some violet ink and I can make a ma.n.u.script look all right. Half a dollar a thousand words, and a quarter for carbon copies. Of course, if you"d got a lot of stuff," she went on, her eyes lighting hopefully upon the little collection of ma.n.u.script upon his table, "I might quote you a trifle less."
He picked up some of his sheets and glanced at them.
"Sooner or later," he admitted, "I shall have to have this typed. It isn"t quite ready yet, though."
He was struck by the curious little light of antic.i.p.ation which somehow changed her face, and which pa.s.sed away at his last words. Under pretence of gathering together some of those loose pages, he examined her more closely and realised that he had done her at first scant justice. She was very thin, and the expression of her face was spoilt by the discontented curve of her lips. The shape of her head, however, was good. Her dark hair, notwithstanding its temporary disarrangement, was of beautiful quality, and her eyes, though dull and spiritless-looking, were large and full of subtle promise. He replaced the sheets of ma.n.u.script.
"Sit down for a moment," he begged.
"I"d rather stand," she replied.
"Just as you please," he a.s.sented, smiling. "I was just wondering what to do about this stuff."
She hesitated for a moment, then a little sulkily she seated herself.
"I suppose you think I"m a pretty forward young person to come up here and beg for work. I don"t care if you do," she went on, swinging her foot back and forth. "One has to live."
"I am very pleased that you came," he a.s.sured her. "It will be a great convenience to me to have my typing done on the premises, and although I am afraid there won"t be much of it, you shall certainly do what there is."
"Story writer?" she enquired.
"I am only a beginner," he told her. "This work I am going to give you is a play."