"Uptown," said Graham to the taxi driver. "I"ll tell you where when I know myself."
A knowing and sympathetic grin covered the big Irish face and a raucous yell came from the hard-used engine, and the taxi went forward with a huge jerk.
The little girl turned her large eyes on Graham. "You do not know vhere you take me?" she asked.
"No, by thunder, I don"t. I can"t drive you like this to a hotel, you"ve got no baggage. Most of my friends live in bachelor apartments, and the women I know,--well, I would like to see their faces if I turned up with you--and _this_ story."
The girl"s foreign gesture was eloquent of despair. She heaved a deep sigh and drew into the corner of the cab. The pa.s.sing lights shone intermittently on her little white face. How small and pitiful and helpless she looked.
The sight of her set Graham"s brain working again. In getting her out of the Papowsky"s poisonous place and leading her step by step down the winding fire-escape and, when it ceased abruptly in mid-air, into the window of a restaurant, he had been brought to the end of one line of thought,--that of getting the girl safely out of her prison. He now started on another, while the cab rocked along the trolley lines beneath the elevated railway, sometimes swerving dangerously out and round the iron supports.
Suddenly Graham was seized with an idea. He put his head out of the cab window and shouted to the driver: "Fifty-five East Fifty-second Street."
The girl turned to him hopefully. "What ees zat?" she asked.
"My home."
"Your "ome? You take me to your "ome?"
"Why no, not exactly. I"m going in to get a bag for you. It won"t have much in it except a brush and comb and a pair of my pajamas, but with them we can drive to any quiet hotel and I"ll get a room for you. In the morning I"ll find a little furnished apartment and you can go out and buy some clothes and the other things that you need. How"s that?"
Ita caught up his hand and held it against her heart. "But you are not going to leave me?"
"Yes, I must," said Graham. "I shall have to register you as my sister.
You"ve just come off the train and I"ve met you at the station. Oh, don"t cry! It"s the best I can do. It"s only just for one night. I"ll fix things to-morrow and you"ll be very happy in a little apartment of your own, won"t you? I"ll see you every day there."
With a sudden and almost painfully touching abandon of grat.i.tude the girl flung herself on the floor of the cab and put her head on Graham"s knees, calling on G.o.d to bless him. Something came into the boy"s throat.
The taxi crossed Fifth Avenue behind a motor-car that was also going towards Madison Avenue. It looked very familiar to Graham. Supposing it was his father returning from one of his medical meetings! He put his head out again, sharply: "Stop at the first house on East Fifty-second Street!" he shouted. Almost before the cab had stopped he leaped out.
"Wait for me here," he added.
"Sure an" I will." The driver threw a glance at his taxi-meter. Not for him to care how long he waited.
Graham darted along the street and up the steps of Number fifty-five, and just as he had the key in the door he heard his father"s voice.
"No, no. Let my car take you home. Yes, a wonderful evening. Most inspiring. Good night! Let"s meet again soon!"
Graham made up his mind what to do. He held the door open for the Doctor and stood waiting for him, with the bored look of one who has had a rather dull evening. "Oh, thank you, Graham," said Dr. Guthrie. "Have you just got back?"
"Yes; I thought I"d get to bed early to-night."
"You look as though you needed sleep," said the Doctor. "But--but don"t go up at once. Please come and have a cigarette in my room. I"ve--I"ve been speaking at the Academy of Medicine,--explaining a new discovery. A great triumph, Graham, a great triumph. I would like to tell one of my sons about it. Won"t you come?"
There was an unwonted look of excitement on his father"s thin face and a ring in his voice which made it almost youthful. It was the first time that Graham had ever received such an invitation. He was surprised, and if he had not been so desperately anxious to slip up-stairs, lay quick hands on the bag and get away again he would have accepted it gladly.
For a reason that he could not explain he felt at that instant an almost unbearable desire to find his father, to get in touch with him, to give something and receive something that he seemed to yearn for and need more urgently than at any other moment in his life. As it was, he was obliged to back out. "I"m frightfully tired to-night," he said, yawning.
"Oh, are you? I"m sorry," said the Doctor apologetically. "Some other night perhaps--some other night."
The two men stood facing each other uncomfortably. Exhilaration had for a moment broken down the Doctor"s shyness. It all came back to him when he found his son"s eyes upon him like those of a stranger. He took off his coat and hat, said "Good-night" nervously and went quickly across the hall and into his library.
He was deeply hurt. He stood among those priceless books with a curious pain running through his veins. "What"s the matter with me?" he asked himself. "Why do I chill my children and make them draw back?"
Graham shut the door, and then as quickly as an eel ran up-stairs to his bedroom, turned on the light, opened the door of the closet and pulled out a large suit-case. Then he began to hunt among the drawers of his wardrobe for some pajamas. He threw these in. From his bathroom he caught up a brush and comb and some bedroom slippers. These followed the pajamas. Then he shut the case, picked it up, crept quietly down-stairs, across the hall and out into the street, shutting the door softly behind him. He gave the taxi-driver the name of a small hotel frequented by actors, and jumped into the cab.
Ita Strabosck welcomed him as though he had been gone a week. ""Ow good you are to me!" she cried. "Eef you never do anysing else een your life, zis that you "ave done for me vill be written down by zee angels een your book."
Graham laughed. "The angels--I wonder."
All the same he was a little proud of himself. Not many men would have perfected the rescue of this little girl so neatly from a house in which her body and soul were in jeopardy. It had been an episode in his sophisticated life which was all to his credit. He felt that,--with pleasure liked the idea of being responsible for this poor little soul, of having some one dependent entirely upon his generosity and who presently would wait for his step with a fluttering heart and run to meet him when he came in tired. He liked also the thought that this girl would be a little secret of his own,--some one personal to himself, to whom he could take his worries--and he had many--and get sympathy and even advice.
The cab drew up. Graham released himself from the girl"s arms and led her into the small and rather fuggy foyer of the hotel, which was a stone"s throw from Broadway. A colored porter pounced upon the bag and an alert clerk looked up from the mail that he was sorting.
"I want a room for my sister," said Graham, "with bath. Got one?"
"Fifth floor," said the clerk, after gazing fixedly for a moment at something at the back of the screen. He then pushed the book towards Graham.
Without a moment"s hesitation, Graham wrote "Miss Nancy Robertson, Buffalo," and took the key that was extended to him. "Come on, Nancy,"
he said, and led the way to the elevator, in which was waiting a tall, florid woman carrying a small bulldog in her arms. She had obviously not taken very great pains to remove the make-up from her face which had been necessary to her small part. Graham recognized her as an actress whom he had seen some nights before in an English play at the Thirty-ninth Street Theatre, and he thought how queer life was and what odd tricks it played. Not a foot away from each other stood two women, the one just back from a place in which she had been aping a human being in a piece utterly artificial and untrue, the other who had played a part in a tragedy of grim and horrible reality, out of which she had been carried before the inevitable climax.
The colored boy, with a hospitable grin on his face, led the way along a narrow, shabby pa.s.sage whose wall-paper was much the worse for wear, and finally opened the door of a small bedroom, switching on the light.
"I"ll undo the case," said Graham quickly.
The boy drew back. "Sure."
"And say! If you"ll see that my sister gets what she rings for I"ll give you five dollars."
"You bet your life, sah." There was a dazzling glint of white teeth.
"Thanks."
"You welcome."
The cry of joy and relief which made the whole room quiver, as soon as the porter had gone, went straight to Graham"s heart. "I guess it"s not much of a room," he said, a little huskily, "but we"ll change all this to-morrow."
The girl ran her hand over the pillow and the bed-cover. "Oh, but eet ees zo sweet and clean," she said, between tears and laughter, "and no one can come. Eet ees mine. You are zo, _zo_ good to me."
Graham undid the case and spilt the meagre contents on the bed. Then he put his hands on Ita"s shoulders and kissed her. "Good-night, you poor little thing," he said. "Sleep well, order anything that you want, and don"t leave this room until I come and fetch you. Your troubles are over."
She clung to him. "But you vill stay a leetle--just a leetle?"
"No, I"m going now."
There was nowhere in Graham"s mind the remotest desire to stay. A new and strange chivalry had taken the place of the pa.s.sion that had swept over him earlier in the evening when the blue light had fallen on her slim body.
She looked into his face, nodded and put her lips to his cheek. "Good night, zen," she said. "You "ave taken me out of h.e.l.l. You are very good."
And as Graham walked home under the gleaming moon and the star-bespattered sky, there was a little queer song in his rather lonely heart.