The Escape of Mr. Trimm Part 10

What she saw, as she sat up, was a short, elderly man with a solicitous, gentle face; the coat sleeves were turned back off his wrists and his linen shirt jutted out between the unfastened upper b.u.t.tons and b.u.t.tonholes of his waistcoat. What the major saw was a girl of perhaps twenty or maybe twenty-two--in her present state it was hard to guess--with hunched-in shoulders and dyed, stringy hair falling in a streaky disarray down over her face like unraveled hemp.

It was her face that told her story. Upon the drawn cheeks and the drooped, woful lips there was no dabbing of cosmetics now; the professional smile, painted, pitiable and betraying, was lacking from the characterless mouth, yet the major--sweet-minded, clean-living old man though he was--knew at a glance what manner of woman he had found here in this lodging house. It was the face of a woman who never intentionally does any evil and yet rarely gets a chance to do any good--a weak, indecisive, commonplace face; and every line in it was a line of least resistance.

That then was what these two saw in each other as they stared a moment across the intervening s.p.a.ce. It was the girl who took the initiative.

"Are you one of the police?" Then instantly on the heels of the query: "No; I know better'n that--you ain't no police!"

Her voice was unmusical, vulgar and husky from much weeping. Magically, though, she had checked her sobbing to an occasional hard gulp that clicked down in her throat.

"No, ma'am," said Major Stone, with a grave and respectful courtesy, "I am not connected with the police department. I am a professional man--a.s.sociated at this time with the practice of journalism. I have the apartment or chamber adjoining yours and, accidentally overhearing a member of the opposite s.e.x in seeming distress, I took it upon myself to offer any a.s.sistance that might lie within my power. If I am intruding I will withdraw."

"No," she said; "it ain't no intrusion. I wisht, please, sir, you'd come in jest a minute anyway. I feel like I jest got to talk to somebody a minute. I'm sorry, though, if I disturbed you by my cryin'--but I jest couldn't help it. Last night and the night before--that was the first night I come here--I cried all night purty near; but I kept my head in the bedclothes. But tonight, after it got dark up here and me layin'

here all alone, I felt as if I couldn't stand it no longer. Honest, I like to died! Right this minute I'm almost plum' distracted."

The major advanced a step.

"I a.s.sure you I deeply regret to learn of your unhappiness," he said.

"If you desire it I will be only too glad to summon our worthy landlady, Miss--Miss----" he paused.

"Miss La Mode," she said, divining--"Blanche La Mode--that's my name. I come from Indianapolis, Indiana. But please, mister, don't call that there woman. I don't want to see her. For a while I didn't think I wanted to see n.o.body, and yit I've known all along, from the very first, that sooner or later I'd jest naturally have to talk to somebody. I knew I'd jest have to!" she repeated with a kind of weak intensity. "And it might jest as well be you as anybody, I guess."

She sat up on the side of the bed, dangling her feet, and subconsciously the major took in fuller details of her attire--the cheap white slippers with rickety, worn-down high heels; the sleazy stockings; the over-decorated skirt of shabby blue cloth; the soiled and rumpled waist of coa.r.s.e lace, gaping away from the scrawny neck, where the fastenings had pulled awry. Looped about her throat and dangling down on her flat breast, where they heaved up and down with her breathing, was a double string of pearls that would have been worth ten thousand dollars had they been genuine pearls. A hand which was big-knuckled and thin held a small, moist wad of handkerchief. About her there was something unmistakably bucolic, and yet she was town-branded, too, flesh and soul. Major Stone bowed with the ceremonious detail that was a part of him.

"My name, ma'am, is Stone--Major Putnam Stone, at your service," he told her.

"Yes, sir," she said, seeming not to catch either his name or his t.i.tle.

"Well, mister, I'm goin' to tell you something that'll maybe surprise you. I ain't goin' to ast you not to tell anybody, 'cause I guess you will anyhow, sooner or later; and it don't make much difference if you do. But seems's if I can't hold in no longer. I guess maybe I'll feel easier in my own mind when I git it all told. Shet that door--jest close it--the lock is broke--and set down in that chair, please, sir."

The major closed the latchless door and took the one tottery chair. The girl remained where she was, on the side of her bed, her slippered feet dangling, her eyes fixed on a spot where there was a three-cornered break in the dirty-gray plastering.

"You know about Rodney G. Bullard, the lawyer, don't you?--about him bein' found shot day before yistiddy evenin' in the mouth of that alley?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "Though I was not personally acquainted with the man himself, I am familiar with the circ.u.mstances you mention."

"Well," she said, with a sort of jerk behind each word, "it was me that done it!"

"I beg your pardon," he said, half doubting whether he had heard aright, "but what was it you said you did?"

"Shot him!" she answered--"I was the one that shot him--with this thing here." She reached one hand under the pillow and drew out a short-barreled, stubby revolver and extended it to him. Mechanically he took it, and thereafter for a s.p.a.ce he held it in his hands. The girl went straight on, pouring out her sentences with a driven, desperate eagerness.

"I didn't mean to do it, though--G.o.d knows I didn't mean to do it! He treated me mighty sorry--it was lowdown and mean all the way through, the way he done me--but I didn't mean him no real harm. I was only aimin' to skeer him into doin' the right thing by me. It was accidental-like--it really was, mister! In all my life I ain't never intentionally done n.o.body any harm. And yit it seems like somebody's forever and a day imposin' on me!" She quavered with the puny pa.s.sion of her protest against the world that had bruised and beaten her as with rods.

Shocked, stunned, the major sat in a daze, making little clucking sounds in his throat. For once in his conversational life he couldn't think of the right words to say. He fumbled the short pistol in his hands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM--WITH THIS THING HERE."

--_Page 164._]

"I'm goin' to tell you the whole story, jest like it was," she went on in her flat drone; and the words she spoke seemed to come to him from a long way off. "That there Rodney Bullard he tricked me somethin'

shameful. He come to the town where I was livin' to make a speech in a political race, and we got acquainted and he made up to me. I was workin' in a hotel there--one of the dinin' room help. That was two years ago this comin' September. Well, the next day, when he left, he got me to come 'long with him. He said he'd look after me. I liked him some then and he talked mighty big about what he was goin' to do for me; so I come with him. He told me that I could be his----" She hesitated.

"His amanuensis, perhaps," suggested the old man.

"Which?" she said. "No; it wasn't that way--he didn't say nothin' about marryin' me and I didn't expect him to. He told me that I should be his girl--that was all; but he didn't keep his word--no, sir; right from the very first he broke his word to me! It wasn't more'n a month after I got here before he quit comin' to see me at all. Well, after that I stayed a spell longer at the house where I was livin' and then I went to another house--Vic Magner's. You know who she is, I reckin?"

The major half nodded, half shook his head.

"By reputation only I know the person in question," he answered a bit stiffly.

"Well," she went on, "there ain't so much more to tell. I've been sick lately--I had a right hard spell. I ain't got my strength all back yit.

I was laid up three weeks, and last Monday, when I was up and jest barely able to crawl round, Vic Magner, she come to me and told me that I'd have to git out unless I could git somebody to stand good for my board. I owed her for three weeks already and I didn't have but nine dollars to my name. I offered her that, but she said she wanted it all or nothin'. I think she wanted to git shet of me anyway. Mister, I was mighty weak and discouraged--I was so! I didn't know what to do.

"I hadn't seen Rod Bullard for goin' on more than a year, but he was the only one I could think of; so I slipped out of the house and went acrost the street to a grocery store where there was a pay station, and I called him up on the telephone and ast him to help me out a little. It wasn't no more than right that he should, was it, seein' as he was responsible for my comin' here? Besides, if it hadn't been for him in the first place I wouldn't never 'a' got into all that trouble. I talked with him over the telephone at his office and he said he'd do somethin'

for me. He said he'd send me some money that evenin' or else he'd bring it round himself. But he didn't do neither one. And Vic Magner, she kept on d.o.g.g.i.n' after me for her board money.

"I telephoned him again the next mornin'; but before I could say more'n two words to him he got mad and told me to quit botherin' him, and he rung off. That was day before yistiddy. When I got back to the house Vic Magner come to me, and I couldn't give her no satisfaction. So about six o'clock in the evenin' she made me pack up and git out. I didn't have nowheres to go and only eight dollars and ninety cents left--I'd spent a dime telephoning so, before I got out I took and wrote Rod Bullard a note, and when I got outside I give a little n.i.g.g.e.r boy fifteen cents to take it to him. I told him in the note I was out in the street, without nowheres to go, and that if he didn't meet me that night and do somethin' for me I'd jest have to come to his office. I said for him to meet me at eight o'clock at the mouth of Grayson Street Alley. That give me two hours to wait. I walked round and round, packin' my baggage.

"Then I come by a p.a.w.nstore and seen a lot of pistols in the window, and I went in and I bought one for two dollars and a half. The p.a.w.nstore man he throwed in the sh.e.l.ls. But I wasn't aimin' to hurt Rod Bullard--jest to skeer him. I was thinkin' some of killin' myself too. Then I walked round some more till I was plum' wore out.

"When eight o'clock come I was waitin' where I said, and purty soon he come along. As soon as he saw me standin' there in the shadder he bulged up to me. He was mighty mad. He called me out of my name and said I didn't have no claims on him--a whole lot more like that--and said he didn't purpose to be bothered with me phonin' him and writin' him notes and callin' on him for money. I said somethin' back, and then he made like he was goin' to hit me with his fist. I'd had that pistol in my hand all the time, holdin' it behind my skirt. And I pulled it and I pointed it like I was goin' to shoot--jest to skeer him, though, and make him do the right thing by me. I jest simply pointed it at him--that's all. I didn't have no idea it would go off without you pulled the hammer back first!

"Then it happened! It went off right in my hand. And he said to me: 'Now you've done it!'--jest like that. He walked away from me about ten feet, and started to lean up against a tree, and then he fell down right smack on his face. And I grabbed up my baggage and run away. I wasn't sorry about him. I ain't been sorry about him a minute since--ain't that funny? But I was awful skeered!"

Rocking her body back and forth from the hips, she put her hands up to her face. Major Stone stared at her, his mind in a twisting eddy of confused thoughts. Perhaps it was the clearest possible betrayal of his utter unfitness for his new vocation in life that not until that very moment when the girl had halted her narrative did it come to him--and it came then with a sudden jolt--that here he had one of those monumental news stories for which young Gilfoil or young Webb would be willing to barter his right arm and throw in an eye for good measure. It was a scoop, as those young fellows had called it--an exclusive confession of a big crime--a thing that would mean much to any paper and to any reporter who brought it to his paper. It would transform a failure into a conspicuous success. It would put more money into a pay envelope. And he had it all! Sheer luck had brought it to him and flung it into his lap.

Nor was he under any actual pledge of secrecy. This girl had told it to him freely, of her own volition. It was not in the nature of her to keep her secret. She had told it to him, a stranger; she would tell it to other strangers--or else somebody would betray her. And surely this sickly, slack-twisted little wanton would be better off inside the strong arm of the law than outside it? No jury of Southern men would convict her of murder--the thought was incredible. She would be kindly dealt with. In one illuminating flash the major divined that these would have been the inevitable conclusions of any one of those ambitious young men at the office. He bent forward.

"What did you do then, ma'am?" he asked.

"I didn't know what to do," she said, dropping her hands into her lap.

"I run till I couldn't run no more, and then I walked and walked and walked. I reckin I must 'a' walked ten miles. And then, when I was jest about to drop, I come past this house. There was a light burnin' on the porch and I could make out to read the sign on the door, and it said Lodgers Taken.

"So I walked in and rung the bell, and when the woman came I said I'd jest got here from the country and wanted a room. She charged me two dollars a week, in advance; and I paid her two dollars down--and she showed me the way up here.

"I've been here ever since, except twice when I slipped out to buy me somethin' to eat at a grocery store and to git some newspapers. At first I figgered the police would be a-comin' after me; but they didn't--there wasn't n.o.body at all seen the shootin', I reckin. And I was skeered Vic Magner might tell on me; but I guess she didn't want to run no risk of gittin' in trouble herself--that Captain Brennan, of the Second Precinct, he's been threatenin' to run her out of town the first good chance he got. And there wasn't none of the other girls there that knowed I ever knew Rod Bullard. So, you see, I ain't been arrested yit.

"Layin' here yistiddy all day, with nothin' to do but think and cry, I made up my mind I'd kill myself. I tried to do it. I took that there pistol out and I put it up to my head and I said to myself that all I had to do was jest to pull on that trigger thing and it wouldn't hurt me but a secont--and maybe not that long. But I couldn't do it, mister--I jest couldn't do it at all. It seemed like I wanted to die, and yit I wanted to live too. All my life I've been jest that way--first thinkin' about doin' one thing and then another, and hardly ever doin'

either one of 'em.

"Here on this bed tonight I got to thinkin' if I could jest tell somebody about it that maybe after that I'd feel easier in my mind. And right that very minute you come and knocked on the door, and I knowed it was a sign--I knowed you was the one for me to tell it to. And so I've done it, and already I think I feel a little bit easier in my mind. And so that's all, mister. But I wisht please you'd take that pistol away with you when you go--I don't never want to see it again as long as I live."

She paused, huddling herself in a heap upon the bed. The major's short arm made a gesture toward the cheap suitcase.

"I observe," he said, "that your portmanteau is packed as if for a journey. Were you thinking of leaving, may I ask?"

"My which?" she said. "Oh, you mean my baggage! Yes; I ain't never unpacked it since I come here. I was aimin' to go back to my home--I got a stepsister livin' there and she might take me in--only after payin'

for this room I ain't got quite enough money to take me there; and now I don't know as I want to go, either. If I kin git my strength back I might stay on here--I kind of like city life. Or I might go up to Cincinnati. A girl that I used to know here is livin' there now and she wrote to me a couple of times, and I know her address--it was backed on the envelope. Still, I ain't sure--my plans ain't all made yit.

Sometimes I think I'll give myself up, but most generally I think I won't. I've got to do somethin' purty soon though, one way or another, because I ain't got but a little over three dollars left out of what I had."