When several minutes had gone by in a silence which struck her soon as awesome, she turned slowly round, only to find herself alone.
She ran into the hall, but there was no one there. He must have gone downstairs. Leaning over the bal.u.s.ter, she called to him.
"Rash! Rash!"
But only Wildgoose, the manservant, answered from below. "Mr. Allerton had just left the "ouse, miss."
Chapter II
While Allerton and Miss Walbrook had been conducting this debate a dissimilar yet parallel scene was enacted in a mean house in a mean street on the other side of the Park. Viewed from the outside, the house was one of those survivals of more primitive times which you will still run across in the richest as well as in the poorest districts of New York. A tiny wooden structure of two low stories, it connected with the sidewalk by a flight of steps of a third of the height of the whole facade. Flat-roofed and clap-boarded, it had once been painted gray with white facings, but time, weather, and soot had defaced these neat colors to a hideous pepper-and-salt.
Within, a toy entry led directly to a toy stairway, and by a door on the left into a toy living-room. In the toy living-room a man of forty-odd was saying to a girl of perhaps twenty-three,
"So you"ll not give it up, won"t you?"
The girl cringed as the man stood over her, but pressing her hand over something she had slipped within the opening at the neck of her cheap shirtwaist, she maintained her ground. The face she raised to him was at once terrified and determined, tremulous with tears and yet defiant with some new exercise of will power.
"No, I"ll not give it up."
"We"ll see."
He said it quietly enough, the menace being less in his tone than in himself. He was so plainly the cheap sport bully that there could have been nothing but a menace in his personality. Flashy male good looks got a kind of brilliancy from a set of big, strong teeth the whiter for their contrast with a black, brigand-like mustache. He was so well dressed in his cheap sport way as to be out of keeping with the dilapidation of the room, in which there was hardly a table or a chair which stood firmly on its legs, or a curtain or a covering which didn"t reek with dust and germs. A worn, thin carpet gaped in holes; what had once been a sofa stood against a wall, shockingly disemboweled. Through a door ajar one glimpsed a toy kitchen where the stove had lost a leg and was now supported by a brick. It was plain that the master of the house was one of those for whom any lair is sufficient as a home as long as he can cut a dash outside.
Quiveringly, as if in terror of a blow, the girl explained herself breathlessly: "The castin" director sent for me just as I was makin"
tracks for home. He ast me if this was the on"y suit I had. When I "lowed it was, he just said he couldn"t use me any more till I got a new one."
The man took the tone of superior masculine knowledge. "That wasn"t nothin" but bull. What if he does chuck you? I know every movin"
picture studio round N"York. I"ll get you in somewheres else. Come now, Letty. Fork out. I need the berries. I owe some one. I was only waitin" for you to come home."
She clutched her breast more tightly. "I gotta have a new suit anyhow."
"Well, I"ll buy you a new suit when I get the bones. Didn"t I give you this one?"
She continued, still breathlessly: "Two years ago--a marked-down misses" it was even then--all right if I was on"y sixteen--but now when I"m near twenty-three--and it"s in rags anyhow--and all out of style--and in pitchers you"ve gotta be----"
"They"se plenty pitchers where they want that character--to pa.s.s in a crowd, and all that."
"To pa.s.s in a crowd once or twice, yes; but when all you can do is to pa.s.s in a crowd, and wear the same old rig every time you pa.s.s in it----"
He cut her protests short by saying, with an air of finality: "Well, anyhow I"ve got to have the bucks. Can"t go out till I get "em. So hand!"
With lips compressed and eyes swimming, she shook her head.
"Better do it. You"ll be sorry if you don"t. I can pa.s.s you that tip straight now."
"If you was laughed at every time you stepped onto the lot----"
"There"s worse things than bein" laughed at. I can tell you that straight now."
"Nothin"s worse than bein" laughed at, not for a girl of my age there ain"t."
Watching his opportunity he caught her off her guard. Her eyes having wandered to the coat she had just taken off, a worn gray thing with edgings of worn gray squirrel fur, he wrenched back with an unexpected movement the hand that clutched something to her breast, thrust two fingers of his other hand within her corsage, and extracted her pay-envelope.
It took her by such surprise that she was like a mad thing, throwing herself upon him and battling for her treasure, though any possibility of her getting it back from him was hopeless. It was so easy for him to catch her by the wrists and twist them that he laughed while he was doing it.
"You little cat! You see what you bring on yourself. And you"re goin"
to get worse. I can tell you that straight now."
Still twisting her arms till she writhed, though without a moan or a cry, he backed her toward the disemboweled sofa, on whose harsh, exposed springs she fell. Then he sprang on her a new surprise.
"How dare you wear them rings? They was your mother"s rings. I bought and paid for "em. They"re mine."
"Oh, don"t take them off," she begged. "You can keep the money----"
"Sure I can keep the money," he grinned, wrenching from her fingers the plain gold band he had given her mother as a wedding ring, as well as another, bigger, broader, showier, and set with two infinitesimal white points claiming to be diamonds.
Though he had released her hands, she now stretched them out toward him pleadingly. "Aw, give "em back to me. They"se all I"ve got in the world to care about--just because she wore "em. You can take anything else I"ve got----"
"All right, then. I"ll take this."
With a deftness which would have done credit to a professor of legerdemain he unbuckled the strap of her little wrist-watch, putting the thing into his pocket.
"I give that to your mother too. You don"t need it, and it may be useful to me. What else have you got?"
She struggled to her feet. He was growing more dangerous than she had ever known him to be even when he had beaten her.
"I ain"t got nothin" else."
"Oh, yes, you have. You gotta purse. I seen you with it. Where is it?"
The fear in her eyes sent his toward her jacket, thrown on the chair when she had come in. With an "Ah!" of satisfaction he pounced on it.
As he held it upside down and shook it, a little leather wallet clattered to the floor. She sprang for it, but again he was too quick for her.
"So!" he snarled, with his glittering grin. "You thought you"d get it, did you?" He rattled the few coins, copper and silver, into the palm of his hand, and unfolded a one-dollar bill. "You must owe me this money. Who"s give you bed and board for the last ten year, I"d like to know? How much have you ever paid me?"
"Only all I ever earned--which you stole from me."
"Stole from you, did I? Well, you won"t fling that in my face any more." He handed her her coat. "Put that on," he commanded.
"What for?" She held it without obeying the order. "What"s the good o"
goin" out and me without a cent?"
"Put it on."