And then catching sight of Simpkins, she dropped the frightened boy back into his chair.
"I can"t stand cruelty to animals," she explained, panting a little from her effort. "If anything of this sort happens again, I"ll discharge you on the spot," she added to the boy.
"Shame!" Simpkins echoed warmly. "Didn"t know what was up or I"d have stopped him."
"I"m sure of it," she answered graciously, and, stooping, she picked up the now purring cat and left the room.
Simpkins followed her back to his desk and went on with his addressing, but he had something worth thinking about now. Not for nothing had he been educated in that newspaper school which puts two and two together and makes six. And by the time he was through work for the day and back in his room at the hotel, he had his result. He embodied it in this letter to Naylor:
_Dear Mr. Naylor_:
I am in the employ of Mrs. Athelstone. How I managed it is a yarn that will keep till I get back. [He meant until he could invent the story which would reflect the most credit on his ingenuity, for though he knew that the whole thing had been a piece of luck he had no intention of cheapening himself with Naylor by owning as much.]
I had intended to return to Boston to-night, but I"m on the track of real news, a lovely stink, something much bigger than the Sunday story.
There"s a sporting parson, quite a swell, in the office here who"s gone on Mrs. A., and I"m inclined to hope she is on him. Anyway, the Doc.
left in a hurry after some sort of a row over a month ago, and hasn"t written a line to his wife since. She"s as cool as a cuc.u.mber about it and handed me a hot one right off the bat about poor old Doc."s having gone away for a rest _a few days ago_. I"ve drawn cards and am going to sit in the game, unless you wire me to come home, for I smell a large, fat, front-page exclusive, which will jar the sensitive slats of some of our first families both here and in dear old London.
Yours, SIMPKINS.
He hesitated a few minutes before he mailed the letter. He really did not want to do anything to involve _her_ in a scandal, but, after all, it was simply antic.i.p.ating the inevitable, and--he pulled himself up short and put the letter in the box. He could not afford any mawkish sentiment in this.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
IV
Simpkins received a monosyllabic telegram from Naylor, instructing him to "stay," but after working in the Society"s office for another three days he was about ready to give up all hope of getting at the facts.
Some other reason, he scarcely knew what, kept him on. Perhaps it was Mrs. Athelstone herself. For though he appreciated how ridiculous his infatuation was, he found a miserable pleasure in merely being near her.
And she was pleased with her new clerk, amused at what she called his quaint Americanisms, and if she noticed his too unrepressed admiration for her, she smiled it aside. It was something to which she was accustomed, an involuntary tribute which most men who saw her often rendered her.
She never referred, even indirectly, to her husband, but Simpkins, as he watched her move about the hall, divined that he was often in her thoughts. And there was another whom he watched--Brander; for he felt certain now that the acting president"s interest in his handsome secretary was not purely that of the Egyptologist. And though there was nothing but a friendly courtesy in her manner toward him, Simpkins knew his subject well enough to understand that, whatever her real feelings were, she was far too clever to be tripped into betraying them to him.
"She doesn"t wear her heart on her sleeve--if she has a heart," he decided.
He was trying to make up his mind to force things to some sort of a crisis, one morning, when Mrs. Athelstone called him to her desk and said rather sharply:
"You"ve been neglecting your work, Simpkins. Isis looks as if she hadn"t been dusted since you came."
This was the fact. Simpkins never pa.s.sed the black altar without a backward glance, as if he were fearful of an attack from behind. And he had determined that nothing should tempt him to a tete-a-tete with the statue behind the veil. But having so senseless, so cowardly a feeling was one thing, and letting Mrs. Athelstone know it another. So he only replied:
"I"m very sorry; afraid I have been a little careless about the statue."
And taking up a soft cloth, he walked toward the altar.
It was quite dark behind the veil; so dark that he could see nothing at first. But after the moment in which his eyes grew accustomed to the change, he made out the vague lines of the statue in the faint light from above. He set to work about the pedestal, touching it gingerly at first, then more boldly. At length he looked up into the face, blurred in the half-light.
When he had finished with the pedestal he pulled himself up between the outstretched arms, and perhaps a trifle hurriedly now, as he saw the face more distinctly, began to pa.s.s the cloth over the arms and back.
Then, quick as the strike of a snake, the arms crushed him against the stone breast. He could not move; he could not cry out; he could not breathe. The statue, seen from the level of the pedestal, had changed its whole expression. Hate glowed in its eyes; menace lived in every line of its face. The arms tightened slowly, inexorably; then, as quickly as they had closed, unclasped; and Simpkins half-slid, half-fell to the floor.
When the breath came back into his lungs and he found himself unharmed, he choked back the cry on his lips, for in that same moment a suspicion floated half-formed through his brain. He forced himself to climb up on the pedestal again, and made a careful inspection of the statue--but from behind this time.
The arms were metal, enameled to the smoothness of the body, and jointed, though the joints were almost invisible. The statue was one of those marvelous creations of the ancient priests, and once, no doubt, it had stood behind the veil in some Egyptian temple to tempt and to punish the curiosity of the neophyte.
Though Simpkins could find no clew to the mechanism of the statue, he determined that he had sprung it with his feet, and that during his struggles a lucky kick had touched the spring which relaxed the arms.
"Did any one beside himself know their strength?" he asked himself, as he stepped out into the hall again. Mrs. Athelstone was bent over her desk writing; Brander was yawning over a novel in his corner, and neither paid any attention to him. So he busied himself going over the mummy-cases, and by the time he had worked around to the two beside Mrs.
Athelstone he had himself well in hand, outwardly. But he was still so shaken internally that he knocked the black case rather roughly as he dusted.
"What way is that to treat a king?" demanded Mrs. Athelstone; and the anger in her voice was so real that Simpkins, startled, blundered out:
"I really meant no disrespect. Very careless of me, I"m sure." He looked so distressed that Mrs. Athelstone"s anger melted into a delicious little laugh, as she answered:
"Really, Simpkins, you musn"t be so bungling. These mummies are priceless." And she got up and made a careful inspection of the case.
Simpkins, rather crestfallen, went back to his desk and began to address circulars, his brain busy with the shadow which had crept into it. But there was nothing to make it more tangible, everything to dispel it, and he was forced to own as much. "It"s a lovely little cozy corner,"
was his final conclusion; "but keep out of it, Simp., old boy. These mechanical huggers are great stuff, but they"re too strong for a fellow that"s been raised on Boston girls."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration ]
V
Mrs. Athelstone was not in the office when he came down the next day--she had gone to Washington on the Society"s affairs, Brander said--and so he moped about, finding the place dreary without her brightening presence. In fact, when Brander went out, he slipped into the sunlit ante-chamber, for companionship, he told himself; but in his heart he knew that he did not want to be alone with that thing behind the altar. He had satisfactorily explained its mechanism to himself, but there was something else about it which he could not explain.
Naylor had telegraphed that very morning: "Get story. Come home. What do you think you"re doing?" and he tried to make up his mind to end the whole affair by taking the night train to Boston. But he hated to go back empty-handed from a four days" a.s.signment. Besides, though he knew himself a fool for it, he wanted to see Mrs. Athelstone once more.
So it happened that he was lingering on in the outer office when the postman threw the afternoon mail on the desk. Simpkins was alone at the moment, and he ran over the letters carelessly until he came to one addressed to Brander in Mrs. Athelstone"s writing. The blue card of the palace car company was in a corner of the envelope.
"Why the deuce is she writing that skunk before she"s well out of town?"
he thought, scanning the envelope with jealous eyes. Then he held it up to the light, but the thick paper told nothing of what was within.
Frowning, he laid the letter down, fingered it, withdrew his itching hand, hesitated, and finally put it in his pocket.
Simpkins went straight from the office to his hotel, for, though he told himself that the letter contained some instructions which Mrs.
Athelstone had forgotten to give Brander before leaving, he was anxious to see just how those instructions were worded. Alone in his little room, he ripped open the letter and ran over its two pages with bewilderment growing in his face. He finished by throwing it down on the table and exclaiming helplessly: "Well, I"ll be d.a.m.ned!"