"But surely, though, you must recall me--Mr. Leary, his partner. I"ve been here before. I"ve spoken to you."
"That voice don"t sound to me like no voice I ever heard."
"I"ve taken cold--that"s why it"s altered."
"So? Then why don"t you come down here where I can have a look at you and make sure?" inquired this careful chatelaine.
"I"m leaning with my head over the rail of the steps right above you,"
said Mr. Leary. "Can"t you poke your head out and see my face? I"m quite sure you would recall me then."
"With this here iron gratin" acrost me window how could I poke me head out? Besides, it"s dark. Say, mister, if you"re on the level what"s the matter with you comin" down here and not be standin" there palaverin"
all the night?"
"I--I--well, you see, I"d rather not come for just a minute--until I"ve explained to you that--that my appearance may strike you as being a trifle unusual, in fact, I might say, queer," pleaded Mr. Leary, seeking by subtle methods of indirection to prepare her for what must surely follow.
"Never mind explainin"--gimme a look!" The suspicious tenseness in her voice increased. "I tell you this--ayther you come down here right this secont or I shut the window and you can be off or you can go to the divil or go anywheres you please for all of me, because I"m an overworked woman and I need my rest and I"ve no more time to waste on you."
"Wait, please; I"m coming immediately," called out Mr. Leary.
He forced his legs to carry him down the steps and reluctantly, yet briskly, he propelled his pink-hued person toward the ray of light that streamed out through the grated window-opening and fell across the areaway.
"You mustn"t judge by first appearances," he was explaining with a false and transparent attempt at matter-of-factness as he came into the zone of illumination. "I"m not what I seem, exactly. You see, I----"
"Mushiful Evans!" The exclamation was half shrieked, half gasped out; and on the words the window was slammed to, the light within flipped out, and through the gla.s.s from within came a vehement warning.
"Get away, you--you lunatic! Get away from here now or I"ll have the cops on you."
"But please, please listen," he entreated, with his face close against the bars. "I a.s.sure you, madam, that I can explain everything if you will only listen."
There was no mercy, no suggestion of relenting in the threatening message that came back to him.
"If you ain"t gone from here in ten seconts I"ll ring for the night watchman on the block, and I"ll blow a whistle for the police. I"ve got me hand on the alarm hook right now. Will you go or will I rouse the whole block?"
"Pray be calm, madam, I"ll go. In fact, I"m going now."
He fell back out of the areaway. Fresh uproar at this critical juncture would be doubly direful. It would almost certainly bring the vengeful Switzer, with his bruised shanks. It would inevitably bring some one.
X
Mr. Leary retreated to the sidewalk, figuratively casting from him the shards and potsherds of his reawakened antic.i.p.ations, now all so rudely shattered again. He was doomed. It would inevitably be his fate to cower in these cold and drafty purlieus until----
No, it wouldn"t either!
Like a golden rift in a sable sky a brand-new ray of cheer opened before him. Who were those married friends of Slack"s, who lived on the third floor--friends with whom once upon a time he and Slack had shared a chafing-dish supper? What was the name? Brady? No, Braydon. That was it--Mr. and Mrs. Edward Braydon. He would slip back again, on noiseless feet, to the doorway where the bells were. He would bide there until the startled caretaker had gone back to her sleep, or at least to her bed.
Then he would play a solo on the Braydons" bell until he roused them.
They would let him in, and beyond the peradventure of a doubt, they would understand what seemed to be beyond the ken of flighty and excitable underlings. He would make them understand, once he was in and once the first shock of beholding him had abated within them. They were a kindly, hospitable couple, the Braydons were. They would be only too glad to give him shelter from the elements until Bob Slack returned from his session at bridge. He was saved!
Within the coping of the stoop he crouched and waited--waited for five long palpitating minutes which seemed to him as hours. Then he applied an eager and quivering finger to the Braydons" b.u.t.ton. Sweet boon of vouchsafed mercy! Almost instantly the latch clicked. And now in another instant Mr. Leary was within solid walls, with the world and the weather shut out behind him.
He stood a moment, palpitant with mute thanksgiving, in the hallway, which was made obscure rather than bright by a tiny pinp.r.i.c.k of gaslight; and as thus he stood, fortifying himself with resolution for the embarra.s.sing necessity of presenting himself, in all his show of quaint frivolity, before these comparative strangers, there came floating down the stair well to him in a sharp half-whisper a woman"s voice.
"Is that you?" it asked.
"Yes," answered Mr. Leary, truthfully. It was indeed he, Algernon Leary, even though someone else seemingly was expected. But the explanation could wait until he was safely upstairs. Indeed, it must wait. Attempted at a distance it would take on rather a complicated aspect; besides, the caretaker just below might overhear, and by untoward interruptions complicate a position already sufficiently delicate and difficult.
Down from above came the response, "All right then. I"ve been worried, you were so late coming in, Edward. Please slip in quietly and take the front room. I"m going on back to bed."
"All right!" grunted Mr. Leary.
But already his plan had changed; the second speech down the stair well had caused him to change it. Safety first would be his motto from now on. Seeing that Mr. Edward Braydon apparently was likewise out late it would be wiser and infinitely more discreet on his part did he avoid further disturbing Mrs. Braydon, who presumably was alone and who might be easily frightened. So he would just slip on past the Braydon apartment, and in the hallway on the fourth floor he would cannily bide, awaiting the truant Slack"s arrival.
On tiptoe then, flight by flight, he ascended toward the top of the house. He was noiselessly progressing along the hallway of the third floor; he was about midway of it when under his tread a loose plank gave off an agonized squeak, and, as involuntarily he crouched, right at his side a door was flung open.
What the discomfited refugee saw, at a distance from him to be measured by inches rather than by feet, was the face of a woman; and not the face of young Mrs. Edward Braydon, either, but the face of a middle-aged lady with startled eyes widely staring, with a mouth just dropping ajar as sudden horror relaxed her jaw muscles, and with a head of grey hair haloed about by a sort of nimbus effect of curl papers. What the strange lady saw--well, what the strange lady saw may best perhaps be gauged by what she did, and that was instantly to slam and bolt the door and then to utter a succession of calliopelike shrieks, which echoed through the house and which immediately were answered back by a somewhat similar series of outcries from the direction of the bas.e.m.e.nt.
XI
Up the one remaining flight of stairs darted the intruder. He flung himself with all his weight and all his force against Bob Slack"s door.
It wheezed from the impact, but its stout oaken panels held fast. Who says the impossible is really impossible? The acc.u.mulated testimony of the ages shows that given the emergency a man can do anything he just naturally has to do. Neither by training nor by habit of life nor yet by figure was Mr. Leary athletically inclined, but a trained gymnast might well have envied the magnificent agility with which he put a foot upon the doork.n.o.b and sprang upward, poising himself there upon a slippered toe, with one set of fingers clutching fast to the minute projections of the door frame while with his free hand he thrust recklessly against the transom.
The transom gave under the strain, moving upward and inward upon its hinges, disclosing an oblong gap above the jamb. With a splendid wriggle the fugitive vaulted up, thrusting his person into the clear s.p.a.ce thus provided. Balanced across the opening upon his stomach, half in and half out, for one moment he remained there, his legs kicking wildly as though for a purchase against something more solid than air. Then convulsive desperation triumphed over physical limitations. There was a rending, tearing sound as of some silken fabric being parted biaswise of its fibres, and Mr. Leary"s droll after sections vanished inside; and practically coincidentally therewith, Mr. Leary descended upon the rugged floor with a thump which any other time would have stunned him into temporary helplessness, but which now had the effect merely of stimulating him onward to fresh exertion.
In a fever of activity he sprang up. Pawing a path through the encompa.s.sing darkness, stumbling into and over various sharp-cornered objects, barking his limbs with contusions and knowing it not, he found the door of the inner room--Bob Slack"s bedroom--and once within that sanctuary he, feeling along the walls, discovered a push bulb and switched on the electric lights.
What matter though the whole house grew clamorous now with a mounting and increasing tumult? What mattered it though he could hear more and more startled voices commingled with the shattering shrieks emanating from the Braydon apartment beneath his feet? He, the hard-pressed and sore-beset and the long-suffering, was at last beyond the sight of mortal eyes. He was locked in, with two rooms and a bath to himself, and he meant to maintain his present refuge, meant to hold this fort against all comers, until Bob Slack came home. He would barricade himself in if need be. He would pile furniture against the doors. If they took him at all it would be by direct a.s.sault and overpowering numbers.
And while he withstood siege and awaited attack he would rid himself of these unlucky caparisons that had been his mortification and his undoing. When they broke in on him--if they did break in on him--he would be found wearing some of Bob Slack"s clothes. Better far to be mistaken for a burglar than to be dragged forth lamentably yet fancifully attired as Himself at the Age of Three. The one thing might be explained--and in time would be; but the other? He felt that he was near the breaking point; that he could no more endure.
XII
He stopped where he was, in the middle of the room, with his eyes and his hands seeking for the seams of the closing of his main garment. Then he remembered what in his stress he had forgotten--the opening or perhaps one should say the closing was at the back. He twisted his arms rearward, his fingers groping along his spine.
Now any normal woman has the abnormal ability to do and then to undo a garment hitching behind. Nature, which so fashioned her elbows that she cannot throw a stone at a hen in the way in which a stone properly should be thrown at a hen, made suitable atonement for this articular oversight by endowing her joints with the facile knack of turning on exactly the right angle, with never danger of sprain or dislocation, for the subjugation of a back-latching frock. Moreover, years of practice have given her adeptness in accomplishing this achievement, so that to her it has become an everyday feat. But man has neither the experience to qualify him nor yet the bodily adaptability.
By reaching awkwardly up and over his shoulder Mr. Leary managed to tug the topmost b.u.t.ton of his array of b.u.t.tons out of its attendant b.u.t.tonholes, but below and beyond that point he could not progress. He twisted and contorted his body; he stretched his arms in their sockets until twin pangs of agony met and crossed between his shoulder blades, and with his two exploring hands he pulled and fumbled and pawed and wrenched and wrested, to make further headway at his task. But the sewing-on had been done with stout thread; the b.u.t.tonholes were taut and snug and well made. Those slippery flat surfaces amply resisted him.
They eluded him; defied him; outmastered him. Thanks be to, or curses be upon, the pa.s.sionate zeal of Miss Rowena Skiff for exact.i.tudes, he, lacking the offices of an a.s.sistant undresser, was now as definitely and finally inclosed in this distressful pink garment as though it had been his own skin. Speedily he recognised this fact in all its bitter and abominable truth, but mechanically, he continued to wrestle with the obdurate fastenings.
While he thus vainly contended, events in which he directly was concerned were occurring beneath that roof. From within his refuge he heard the sounds of slamming doors, of hurrying footsteps, of excited voices merging into a distracted chorus; but above all else, and from the rest, two of these voices stood out by reason of their augmented shrillness, and Mr. Leary marked them both, for since he had just heard them he therefore might identify their respective unseen owners.
"There"s something--there"s somebody in the house!" At the top of its register one voice was repeating the warning over and over again, and judging by direction this alarmist was shrieking her words through a keyhole on the floor below him. "I saw it--him--whatever it was. I opened my door to look out in the hall and it--he--was right there. Oh, I could have touched him! And then it ran and I didn"t see him any more and I slammed the door and began screaming."
"You seen what?"
The strident question seemed to come from far below, down in the depths of the house, where the caretaker abided.
"Whatever it was. I opened the door and he was right in the hall there glaring at me. I could have touched it. And then he ran and I----"