Perhaps the whole business was a bit of graft. But his intelligence rejected that suggestion. If this had been the explanation, the boy would not have concluded the episode so briskly. He had got the strange young man where he might have "kept him going" for days and made a good income in the process. As it was, there seemed nothing more to do. And yet--and yet--how the deuce could one let the thing drop like that? If the girl was really in straits--
Thus the subconscious argument went on and on. It worried Laurie. He was not used to such violent mental exercise. Least of all was he in the habit of disturbing himself about the affairs of others. But this affair was different. The girl was so pretty! Also, he had recurrent visions of his sister Barbara in the position of his mysterious neighbor. Barbara might easily have gone through such an experience during last year"s test in New York. In that same experiment Laurie himself had learned how slender is the plank that separates one from the abyss that lies beneath the world"s workers.
He dined alone that night and it was well he did so. His lack of appet.i.te would certainly have attracted the attention of Bangs or any other fellow diner, and Bangs would as certainly have commented upon it.
Also, he pa.s.sed a restless night, troubled by vaguely depressing dreams.
The girl was in them, but everything was as hopelessly confused as his daytime mental processes had been.
The next morning he deliberately kept away from the mirror until he was fully dressed, but he dressed with a feeling of tenseness and urgency he would have found it difficult to explain. He only knew that to-day he meant to do something definite, something that would settle once for all the question that filled his mind. But what could he do? That little point was still unsettled. Knock at the girl"s door, pretend that it was a blunder, and trust to inspiration to discover in the brief encounter if anything was wrong? Or put money in an envelop and push it under her door? If he did that, she would probably give the money to Sam, as she had given him the food.
What to do? Laurie proceeded with his toilet, using the dressing-case and carefully avoiding the long mirror. He experienced an odd unwillingness to look into that mirror this morning, based partly on delicacy--he remembered the nightdress--but more on the fear of disappointment. If he saw her, it would be an immense relief. If he didn"t, he"d fancy all sorts of things, for now his imagination was running away with him.
When he was fully dressed he crossed the room in three strides and stopped before the mirror with a suddenness that checked him half-way in the fourth.
Miss Mayo"s window was open. He could see that. He could see more than that, and what he saw sent him rushing through the study and out into the hall of the big apartment building, where he furiously rang the elevator bell. He had not stopped for his hat and coat, but he had caught a vision of Bangs"s astonished face and half of his startled exclamation, "What the dev--"
The elevator came and Laurie leaped into it.
"Down," he said briefly.
The operator was on his way up to the twelfth floor, but something in the expression of his pa.s.senger made him change his plans. Also it accelerated his movements. The car descended briskly to the ground floor, from which point the operator was privileged to watch the progress of the temperamental Mr. Devon, who had plunged through the main entrance of the building and across the square without a word to the hall attendants, or a backward glance.
As he reached the studio building Laurie recalled himself to a memory of the conventions. He entered without undue haste, and sought the door of the waiting lift. It was noon, and an operator he had not seen before was on duty.
"Top floor," directed Laurie, and stepped into the car. The operator hesitated. He did not remember this tenant, but he must belong to the house, as he wore no hat or coat. Probably he was a new-comer, and had run down-stairs to mail an important letter, as the old building held no mail-chute. While these reflections pa.s.sed slowly through his mind, his car rose as slowly. To the mentally fuming young man at his side its progress was intolerably deliberate. He held himself in, however, and even went through the pantomime of pausing in the top-floor hall to search a pocket as if for a latch-key.
Satisfied, the attendant started the elevator on its descent, and as it sank from sight Laurie looked around him for Number Twenty-nine. He discovered it in an eye-flash, on the door at the right. The next instant he had reached this door and was softly turning the k.n.o.b.
The door did not yield. He had not expected it to give, and he knew exactly what he meant to do. He stepped back a few feet, then with a rush hurled his shoulder against the wood with the full force of his foot-ball training in the effort. The lock yielded, and under the force of his own momentum the visitor shot into the room. Then, recovering his equilibrium, he pushed the door into place and stood with his back against it, breathing heavily and feeling rather foolish.
He was staring at the girl before him, who had risen at his entrance.
Her expression was so full of astonished resentment, and so lacking in any other emotion, that for a sickening moment he believed he had made an idiot of himself, that he had not really seen what he thought he had seen in the gla.s.s. A small table separated him from the girl. Still staring at her, in the long seconds that elapsed before either spoke, he saw that she had swept her right hand behind her back, in a swift, instinctive effort to hide what it held. His self-possession returned.
He had not been mistaken. He smiled at her apologetically.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I"m afraid I frightened you."
"You did." She spoke tensely, the effect of overstrained nerves revealing itself in her low voice. "What do you mean by it? What are you doing here?"
Laurie"s brilliant eyes were on hers as she spoke, and held them steadily. Under his expression, one that few had seen on his face, her look of antagonism softened a little. He advanced slowly to the table between them.
"It will take a few minutes to explain," he said. Then, as she waited, he suddenly formed his plan, and followed the good old Devon principle of going straight to the point.
"I live diagonally across the square," he said quietly, "and I can see into your window from one of mine. So it happened that just now I--I saw what you were going to do."
For an instant she stood very still, looking at him, as if not quite taking in the meaning of his words. In the next her face and even her neck crimsoned darkly as if under the rush of a wave of angry humiliation. When she spoke her voice shook.
"You forget," she said, "that you have no right either to look into my room or to interfere with what you see there."
"I know," he told her, humbly, "and I beg your pardon again. The looking in was an accident, the merest chance, which I will explain to you later. The interference--well, I won"t apologize for that. Surely you realize that it"s--friendly."
For the first time her eyes left his. She looked around the room as if uncertain what to do or say.
"Perhaps you mean it so," she muttered at last. "But I consider it--impertinent."
A change was taking place in her. The fire that had flamed up at his entrance was dying out, leaving her with the look of one who is cowed and almost beaten. Even her last words lacked a.s.surance. Watching her in puzzled sympathy, Laurie for the first time wished himself older and wiser than he was. How could he handle a situation like this? Neither then nor later did he ask himself how he would have handled it on the stage.
For a moment the two young things gazed at each other, in helplessness and irresolution on his side, in resentful questioning on hers. Even in the high tension of the moment Laurie subconsciously took in the picture she made as she stood there, defying him, with her back to the wall of life.
She was very lovely, more lovely than in the mirror; for now he was getting the full effect of her splendid coloring, set off by the gown she wore, a thing of rich but somber shades, lit up by a semi-barbaric necklace of amber and gold, that hung almost to her knees.
Yes, the girl was a picture against the unforgetable background of that tragic situation. But what he admired most of all was the dignity that shone through her panic and her despair. She was up in arms against him.
And yet, if he had not come, if that vision had not flashed into his mirror five minutes ago, she might now have been lying a huddled, lifeless thing on the very spot where she stood so proudly. At the thought his heart shook. The right words came to him at last.
"I"ve had--impulses--like yours," he said. "I"ve had them twice.
Fortunately, both times there was some one around to talk me out of them." He had caught her attention. She showed that by the way she looked at him. "The argument that impressed me most," he went on, "was that it"s quitting the game. You don"t look as if you were a quitter,"
he ended, thoughtfully.
The girl"s eyes blazed. He had aroused her once more, and he was glad of it. He didn"t know at all what to do or say, but he dimly felt that almost any emotion in her would be better than the lethargy she had just revealed.
"I"m not a quitter!" she cried. "But I"ve got dignity enough to leave a place where I"m not wanted, even if that place happens to be the world.
Go away!" she added fiercely. "Go away and leave me alone!"
Resting one hand on the table between them, he held out the other.
"Come, let me have that," he suggested, imperturbably. "Then we"ll talk things over. I"ll try to make you realize what I was made to realize myself--that we were both on the wrong track. I"ll tell you what others think who are wiser than we are."
As she did not move, he added, more lightly: "You see, what we were going to do isn"t done much nowadays. It"s all out of date. Come," he repeated, gently, "let me have it."
With a movement of irritation the girl swept her hand forward and tossed on the table between them the small revolver she had been holding.
"Take it," she said, almost indifferently. And she added, "Another time will do as well."
He picked up the little weapon and put it into his pocket.
"There isn"t going to be any other time," he predicted buoyantly. "Now, slip into a coat while I run across the street and get my hat and coat and order a taxicab. We"re going out to luncheon, and to tell each other the stories of our lives, with all the grim and gory details."
"I don"t know you," muttered the girl. She had dropped into a chair beside the table, and was sitting with her chin in her hand, in what seemed a characteristic att.i.tude, watching him with an expression he could not a.n.a.lyze.
Laurie seemed surprised. "Why, so you don"t!" he agreed. "But you"re going to now. We"re going to know each other awfully well before we get through. In the meantime, you can see by the merest glance at me how young and harmless I am. Where"s the coat?"
He turned and began a vague, masculine search for it. The girl wavered.
His rising spirits were contagious, and it was clear that she dreaded being left alone.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "You see, what we were going to do isn"t done much nowadays"]
"I warn you," she said at last, "that if you have anything to do with me you will be sorry for it."
Laurie stopped his search, and, turning, gave her one of his straight looks.
"Why?" he demanded.