CHAPTER V
MR. HERBERT RANSOME SHAW
The man in the shabby blue-serge suit detached his absent gaze from the opposite wall, and looked up quickly when Laurie stopped at his side. He was clearly surprised, but courteous. He half rose from his chair, but the new-comer waved him back and dropped easily into the vacant seat opposite him. He was smiling. The man in blue serge was not. He looked puzzled, though vaguely responsive. A third person, watching the two, might almost have thought the episode the casual reunion of men who frequently lunched together.
Laurie leaned forward in his chair, rested one elbow on the table, and, opening his cigarette-case, extended it to the stranger. The latter rejected it with a slight bow.
"Thank you, but not before lunch," he said, quietly. His voice and manner were those of an educated man. The quality of his tone was slightly harsh.
Laurie lit a cigarette, blew out the match, and looked straight into the stranger"s projecting gray eyes. He had acted impulsively. Now that he was here, he was anxious to put the job over concisely, firmly, but, above all, neatly. There must be nothing done that would attract the attention of the few persons in the big room.
"I came over here," he said casually, "to mention to you that you are annoying the lady I am with. I want to mention also that the annoyance must stop."
The glance of the stranger held. Laurie observed with interest that the veiled look of the projecting eyes had changed a little. The change did not add to the stranger"s charm.
"Before I answer you, tell me one thing," he said, formally. "By what right do you act as the lady"s protector?"
Laurie hesitated an instant. The question was embarra.s.sing.
"Has she authorized you to act?"
"In a way, but--"
"How long have you known her? How well do you know her?"
Command of the interview was slipping from the younger man. He resolutely resumed it.
"Look here," he said, firmly, "I came to this table to tell you something, but I will decide what that is to be. I am not here to answer questions. It is enough for you to know that circ.u.mstances have given me the right to protect the lady from annoyance. I want to make it clear to you that I shall exercise that right. Hereafter you are to let her alone. Do you understand? Absolutely alone. You are not to follow her, not to enter places where she is, not to bow to her, nor to be where she can see you," he recklessly ended.
The stranger looked at him through the light veil which seemed again to have fallen over the projecting eyes.
"I should really like to know," he said, "when and where you met her. I saw you starting off together in the taxicab, but I am not quite sure whether your first encounter occurred this morning."
"And you won"t be." Laurie stood up. "I"ve warned you," he said curtly.
"I don"t know how well you understand our laws in this country, but I fancy you know enough of them to realize that you cannot shadow a lady without getting into trouble."
"She admitted that?" The stranger appeared to experience a tepid glow of emotion. "She must know you better than I thought," he added reflectively. "Doris is not the type to pour her confidence into every new ear," he mused, seeming to forget the other"s presence in his interest in this revelation.
"Have I made myself quite clear?"
Laurie was staring at him with a mingling of resentment and interest.
The other nodded.
"You have, my young friend," he said, with sudden seriousness, "and now I, too, will be clear. In return for one warning, I will give you another. Keep out of matters that do not concern you."
Laurie grinned at him.
"You forget that I have made this matter my concern," he said, lightly.
"Try to remember that."
The other man rose. His manner had changed to a sort of impatient weariness.
"Get her out of here," he said abruptly. "You are beginning to irritate me, you two. Take her home, and then keep away from her, unless you are looking for trouble."
He delivered the last words so clearly and menacingly that the waiter who had appeared with his luncheon heard them and fell back a step.
Looking into the veiled eyes, Laurie also felt a sense of recoil. The fellow was positively venomous. There was something serpentlike in the dull but fixed look of those goggling eyes, in the forward thrust of the smooth brown head.
"I"ve said my say," he retorted. "If I ever catch you around that studio, or in any way annoying the lady, I"ll thrash you within an inch of your life; and then I"ll turn what"s left of you over to the authorities. Understand?"
He nodded and strolled back to Miss Mayo"s table. For an instant the other man stood looking after him, as if tempted to follow. Then, with a shrug, he dropped into his chair and began the luncheon the waiter had placed before him.
Laurie found the girl standing by the table, ready for the street, her coat fastened, her gloves b.u.t.toned.
"Oh, how could you!" she gasped. "What did he say?"
Laurie summoned the waiter with a gesture and asked for his account.
"Sit down a minute," he suggested, "and tell me who he is."
"Not here," she urged. "I couldn"t breathe here. Hurry, please. Let us get away!"
She was so obviously in earnest that he yielded. He paid the bill, which the waiter had ready, accepted that appreciative servitor"s help with his overcoat, and escorted his guest from the room.
"But, for heaven"s sake, don"t run!" he laughed. "Do you want the creature to think we"re flying before him?"
She flushed and moderated her pace. Side by side, and quite deliberately, they left the restaurant, while the stranger watched them with his dull, fixed gaze. He seemed to have recovered his temper, but it was also plain that the little encounter had given him something to think about. When he resumed his luncheon he ate slowly and with an air of deep abstraction, as if working out some grave problem.
"What"s his name?" asked Laurie, as he helped Miss Mayo into a waiting taxicab.
She looked startled. Indeed, his most casual questions seemed to startle her and put her, in a way, on her guard.
"Shaw," she answered, unwillingly.
"Is it spelled P-s-h-a-w?"
Laurie asked the question with polite interest. Then, realizing that in her preoccupation she did not follow this flight of his mercurial spirits, he sobered. "It"s a perfectly good name," he conceded, "but there must be more of it. What"s the rest?"
"He calls himself Herbert Ransome Shaw."
Laurie made a mental note of the name.
"I shall call him Bertie," he firmly announced, "to show you how unimportant he really is. By the way,"--a sudden memory struck him--"he told me your name--Doris."
He added the name so simply that he seemed to be calling her by it. A faint shadow of her elusive smile touched her lips.