The Deluge Part 7

It takes an uncommon good liar to lie to me when I'm on the alert. As I was determined to see Langdon, I was in so far on the alert. And I felt the fellow was lying. "That's reasonable," said I. "Call me up, if you hear from him. I want to see him--important, but not immediate." And I went away, having left the impression that I would make no further effort.

Incredible though it may seem, especially to those who know how careful I am to guard every point and to see in every friend a possible foe, I still did not suspect that smooth, that profound scoundrel. I do not use these epithets with heat. I flatter myself I am a connoisseur of finesse and can look even at my own affairs with judicial impartiality. And Langdon was, and is now, such a past master of finesse that he compels the admiration even of his victims. He's like one of those fabled Damascus blades. When he takes a leg off, the victim forgets to suffer in his amazement at the cleanness of the wound, in his incredulity that the leg is no longer part of him. "Langdon," said I to myself, "is a sly dog. No doubt he's busy about some woman, and has covered his tracks." Yet I ought, in the circ.u.mstances, instantly to have suspected that I was the person he was dodging.

I went up to his house. You, no doubt, have often seen and often admired its beautiful facade, so simple that it hides its own magnificence from all but experienced eyes, so perfect in its proportions that it hides the vastness of the palace of which it is the face. I have heard men say: "I'd like to have a house--a moderate-sized house--one about the size of Mowbray Langdon's--though perhaps a little more elegant, not so plain."

That's typical of the man. You have to look closely at him, to study him, before you appreciate how he has combined a thousand details of manner and dress into an appearance which, while it can not but impress the ordinary man with its distinction, suggests to all but the very observant the most modest plainness and simplicity. How few realize that simplicity must be profound, complex, studied, not to be and to appear crude and coa.r.s.e. In those days that truth had just begun to dawn on me.

"Mr. Langdon isn't at home," said the servant.

I had been at his house once before; I knew he occupied the left side--the whole of the second floor, so shut off that it not only had a separate entrance, but also could not be reached by those in the right side of the house without descending to the entrance hall and ascending the left stairway.

"Just take my card to his private secretary, to Mr. Rathburn," said I. "Mr.

Langdon has doubtless left a message for me."

The butler hesitated, yielded, showed me into the reception-room off the entrance hall. I waited a few seconds, then adventured the stairway to the left, up which he had disappeared. I entered the small salon in which Langdon had received me on my other visit. From the direction of an open door, I heard his voice--he was saying: "I am not at home. There's no message."

And still I did not realize that it was I he was avoiding!

"It's no use now, Langdon," I called cheerfully. "Beg pardon for seeming to intrude. I misunderstood--or didn't hear where the servant said I was to wait. However, no harm done. So long! I'm off." But I made no move toward the door by which I had entered; instead, I advanced a few feet nearer the door from which his voice had come.

After a brief--a very brief--pause, there came in Langdon's voice--laughing, not a trace of annoyance: "I might have known! Come in, Matt!"

IX. LANGDON AT HOME

I entered, with an amused glance at the butler, who was giving over his heavy countenance to a delightful exhibition of disgust and discomfiture.

It was Langdon's sitting-room. He had had the carved antique oak interior of a room in an old French palace torn out and transported to New York and set up for him. I had made a study of that sort of thing, and at Dawn Hill had done something toward realizing my own ideas of the splendid.

But a glance showed me that I was far surpa.s.sed. What I had done seemed in comparison like the composition of a school-boy beside an essay by Goldsmith or Hazlitt.

And in the midst of this quiet splendor sat, or rather lounged, Langdon, reading the newspapers. He was dressed in a dark blue velvet house-suit with facings and cords of blue silk a shade or so lighter than the suit. I had always thought him handsome; he looked now like a G.o.d. He was smoking a cigarette in an oriental holder nearly a foot long; but the air of the room, so perfect was the ventilation, instead of being scented with tobacco, had the odor of some fresh, clean, slightly saline perfume.

I think what was in my mind must have shown in my face, must have subtly flattered him, for, when I looked at him, he was giving me a look of genuine friendly kindliness. "This is--perfect, Langdon," said I. "And I think I'm a judge."

"Glad you like it," said he, trying to dissemble his satisfaction in so strongly impressing me.

"You must take me through your house sometime," I went on. "I'm going to build soon. No--don't be afraid I'll imitate. I'm too vain for that. But I want suggestions. I'm not ashamed to go to school to a master--to anybody, for that matter."

"Why do you build?" said he. "A town house is a nuisance. If I could induce my wife to take the children to the country to live, I'd dispose of this."

"That's it--the wife," said I.

"But you have no wife. At least--"

"No," I replied with a laugh. "Not yet. But I'm going to have."

I interpreted his expression then as amused cynicism. But I see a different meaning in it now. And I can recall his tone, can find a strained note which then escaped me in his usual mocking drawl.

"To marry?" said he. "I haven't heard of that."

"Nor no one else," said I.

"Except her," said he.

"Not even except her," said I. "But I've got my eye on her--and you know what that means with me."

"Yes, I know," drawled he. Then he added, with a curious twinkle which I do not now misunderstand: "We have somewhat the same weakness."

"I shouldn't call it a weakness," said I. "It's the quality that makes the chief difference between us and the common run--the fellows that have no purposes beyond getting comfortably through each day--"

"And getting real happiness," he interrupted, with just a tinge of bitterness.

"We wouldn't think it happiness," was my answer.

"The worse for us," he replied. "We're under the tyranny of to-morrow--and happiness is impossible."

"May I look at your bedroom?" I asked.

"Certainly," he a.s.sented.

I pushed open the door he indicated. At first glimpse I was disappointed.

The big room looked like a section of a hospital ward. It wasn't until I had taken a second and very careful look at the tiled floor, walls, ceiling, that I noted that those plain smooth tiles were of the very finest, were probably of his own designing, certainly had been imported from some great Dutch or German kiln. Not an inch of drapery, not a picture, nothing that could hold dust or germs anywhere; a square of sanitary matting by the bed; another square opposite an elaborate exercising machine. The bed was of the simplest metallic construction--but I noted that the metal was the finest bronze. On it was a thin, hard mattress. You could wash the big room down and out with the hose, without doing any damage.

"Quite a contrast," said I, glancing from the one room to the other.

"My architect is a crank on sanitation," he explained, from his lounge.

I noted that the windows were huge--to admit floods of light--and that they were hermetically sealed so that the air should be only the pure air supplied from the ventilating apparatus. To many people that room would have seemed a cheaply got together cell; to me, once I had examined it, it was evidently built at enormous cost and represented an extravagance of common-sense luxury which was more than princely or royal.

Suddenly my mind reverted to my business. "How do you account for the steadiness of Textile, Langdon?" I asked, returning to the carved sitting-room and trying to put those surroundings out of my mind.

"I don't account for it," was his languid, uninterested reply.

"Any of your people under the market?"

"It isn't to my interest to have it supported, is it?" he replied.

"I know that," I admitted. "But why doesn't it drop?"

"Those letters of yours may have overeducated the public in confidence,"

suggested he. "Your followers have the habit of believing implicitly whatever you say."

"Yes, but I haven't written a line about Textile for nearly a month now," I pretended to object, my vanity fairly purring with pleasure.

"That's the only reason I can give," said he.

"You are sure none of your people is supporting the stock?" I asked, as a form and not for information; for I thought I knew they weren't--I trusted him to have seen to that.