A Fool There Was Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

YOUNG PARMALEE--AND THE WOMAN.

He came slinking down the deck of the liner, furtive of eye, uneven of tread. A young man he was--and yet old; for while his body told of youth, his face bespoke age--the unnatural forced age--the hot-housed growth of they who live in the froth of life--in the froth that it is hard to tell from the sc.u.m.

He was tall, and well-set-up. His clothes hung well about his body; they were of fine texture and make, yet unpressed, uncared for. He had been handsome; but he was no longer; for the eyes looked forth from hollows in his face. His cheeks were sunken. His lips were leaden. He was unshaven, ungroomed, unkempt.

Looking nervously, this way and that, he made his way among the jostling throngs to one of the pa.s.sages. Searching with sunken eyes for a numbered door, he knocked upon it with the knuckles of his left hand; his right rested at his side, covered with a handkerchief of white silk.... He knocked; and stepped back, quickly. There was no answer; the door remained shut. He stepped forward again, thrusting the door wide open.

The stateroom was empty. He turned. Out upon the deck he strode; then, starting back, he concealed himself in the pa.s.sageway that he had just left.

Coming down the deck was a woman, a woman darkly beautiful, tall, lithe, sinuous. Great ma.s.ses of dead black hair were coiled about her head. Her cheeks were white; her lips very red. Eyes heavy lidded looked out in cold, inscrutable hauteur upon the confusion about her. She wore a gown that clung to her perfectly-modelled figure--that seemed almost a part of her being. She carried, in her left arm, a great cl.u.s.ter of crimson roses.

Down the deck she came, slowly, as a queen going to her throne. She turned....

The man hiding in the pa.s.sageway confronted her. His eyes were burning as of a fever; his whole body shook.... She remained calm, cold, unmoved.

At length, the woman spoke, half smiling:

"You? ... I thought that we were through."

His voice was tense, strained, unnaturally pitched. The words came between clenched teeth.

"You did, eh? You thought you'd throw me over, as you did Rogers, and Van Dam, and the rest of them.... But it won't work--you Vampire!"

Swiftly, he tore from his right hand, the handkerchief that covered it.

There was in it a revolver. The bright mouth of the weapon sprang to the white forehead of The Woman.

Yet she did not start--she made no sound, no movement. The smile still dwelt upon her lips. It was only in the eyes that a difference came--in the black, inscrutable eyes. They gleamed now, heavy-lidded as before.

Their gaze was fixed straight into the sunken, hate-lit eyes of the man before her, a man who, but for her, might still have been a boy. She bent forward a little.... Her forehead, between the eyes, was now touching the bright muzzle of the weapon. The finger on the trigger trembled-- trembled but did not pull.

Came slowly, sibillantly, from between the smiling red lips:

"Kiss me, My Fool!"

Her eyes still fixed him.... The hand holding the revolver trembled more violently. Slowly the mouth of the weapon sank to lips--to chin--to breast.... It hovered there a moment, just over the heart--the finger twitched a little--twitched but did not pull. It was a finger governed by a vanished will in a shrivelled brain.

Then, suddenly, the revolver leaped--the finger pulled. With a shrill screech of hopeless, hideous imprecation, a shriek that died still-born, the bullet pierced flesh and bone and brain; and that which had been a man that should have been a boy, lurched drunkenly and lay a crumpled nothing upon the deck. There was blood upon the deck--beside the hem of the crimson gown, near to the crimson heel of her shoe. And the gown was caught beneath the body of the boy that was.

She looked down upon him. The smile not even yet had left her lips. With a lithe movement, infinitely graceful, she drew away, disengaging the hem of her crimson garment.... A crimson petal from the great cl.u.s.ter in her arms fell upon it, to lie upon the hollow whiteness of the upturned cheek.... And that was all.

A man--a man that should have been a boy--was gone.... Hurrying, horror- ridden pa.s.sengers found him there, alone. The doctor came, and stewards, and the captain. They lifted him, and bore him away. Of those who live in the froth of things--the froth that is often the sc.u.m--there were several. One of these knew him.

"It's Young Parmalee," he informed them.

And that was all he knew; that, and possibly some other things that are little. But of the great things, he knew nothing. For of these great things, G.o.d has told us but little.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

A WARNING.

The storm that had come hissing across the Sound did not last long. Its very fierceness, it seemed, was its own undoing. Its frenzy soon pa.s.sed.

And anon the sun shone; the drooping flowers raised to it pitiful, bedraggled little faces; and from the fields, rose the burden of incense, moist, fragrant giving wet thanks of its coming and of its going.

Schuyler's farewells had been but tentative. It had been understood that, should the storm abate, Mrs. Schuyler, Muriel and Blake would follow on the next train; for he himself was forced by the exigency of his mission to reach the city at least two hours before sailing time.

The car, returning from the trip to the depot, was again called into service. Parks, as well, had waited, and went with them.

Reaching the city, Blake's machine, for which he had telephoned from Larchmont, was waiting; and in this they made the journey through the traffic-thronged New York streets, to the dock; a route that leads one from wealth to poverty, from respectability to license, from well--doing to ill-doing, and through all that lies between.

The dock, beside which lay tugging at her cables the huge liner, was confusion thrice confused. Jolting cabs, rattling taxis, smooth-running private cars, drays and vans, added to the tumult caused by the hundred-- the thousands--of hurrying, scurrying humanity. Came the calls of excited pa.s.sengers, the rumbling of trucks, the Babel-like voices of emigrants; and, beyond, the noises of the Great River.

Alighting from the car at the gangway, they boarded the ship, with its crowded decks. Schuyler's stateroom was aft, in the center of the ship.

It lay the first door to the right, as one enters the narrow pa.s.sageway.

To it the little party made its way.

The door of the room opposite was ajar. Blake noticed that there lay therein a great ma.s.s of crimson roses; scattered amid the toilet articles and accessories of a woman. Pa.s.sing through the crowds of the deck, he had heard, also, The Man Who Knew telling another man, who did not know of Young Parmalee. It had been but a word. But it had been a word that had found fructification and meaning in the sight of a deck steward, with a bucket, mopping up something from the deck, just outside the little pa.s.sageway.

Kathryn and Muriel, seen safely to the room that Schuyler was to occupy, Blake returned and made his way out upon the deck. He stood for a moment by the steward, watching him.

Then very quietly inquired:

"Where did it happen, Steward?"

The steward, wringing out the mop into the dark water of his bucket, looked up. There were beads of sweat upon his bronzed, wrinkled brow. Yet the day was not warm.

"Wot, sir?" he queried.

"Where did it happen?"

"Wot happen sir?"

"Young Parmalee's suicide." Blake spoke quietly, calmly.

The steward's eyes shifted.

"Suicide, sir?" he said. "Don't know nothink about it, gov'ner."

Blake pointed to the spot upon the deck.