The Hollow of Her Hand Part 13

At last the crowd gave out a deep, hissing breath and surged forward.

They were bearing Challis Wrandall down the steps. The wall of policemen held firm; the morbid hundreds fell back and glared with unblinking eyes at the black thing that slowly crossed the sidewalk and slid noiselessly into the yawning mouth of the hea.r.s.e. No man in all that mob uncovered his head, no woman crossed herself.

Inwardly they reviled the police who kept them from seeing all that they wanted to see. They were being cheated.

Then there was an eager shout from the foremost in the throng, and the word went singing through the crowd, back to the outer fringe, where men danced like so many jumping-jacks in the effort to see above the heads of those in front.

"Here they come!" went the hoa.r.s.e whisper, like the swish of the wind.

"Stand back, please!"

"That's his mother!" cried a shrill voice, triumphantly,--even gladly. She was the first to give the news.

"Keep back!" growled the police, lifting their clubs.

"Which one is his wife?"

"Has she come out yet?"

"Get out of my way, d.a.m.n you!"

"Say, if these cops was doing their duty they'd--"

"That's what I say! No wonder they never ketch anybody."

"Say, they don't seem to be takin' it very hard. I thought they'd be cryin' like--"

"Is that his wife?"

"Poor little thing! Ouch! You big ruffian!"

"Swell business, eh?"

"She won't be sayin' 'Where's my wanderin' boy--'"

"If we had police in this city that could ketch a street car we'd--"

"That's old man Wrandall. I've waited on him dozens o' times."

"Did they have any children?"

Up in the front rank stood a slim little thing with yellow hair and carmined lips, wrapped in costly furs yet shivering as if chilled to the bone. Four plain clothes men were watching her narrowly. She was known to have been one of Challis Wrandall's a.s.sociates. When she shrank back into the crowd and made her way to the outskirts, hurrying as if pursued by ghosts, two men followed close behind, and kept her in sight for many blocks.

The motors and carriages rolled away, and there was left only the policemen and the unsatiated mob. They watched the undertaker's a.s.sistant remove the great bow of black from the door of the house.

By the end of the week the murder of Challis Wrandall was forgotten by all save the police. The inquest was over, the law was baffled, the city was serenely waiting for its next sensation. No one cared.

Leslie Wrandall went down to the steamer to see his sister-in-law off for Europe.

"Good-bye, Miss Castleton," he said, as he shook the hand of the slim young Englishwoman at parting. "Take good care of Sara. She needs a friend, a good friend, now. Keep her over there until she has--forgotten."

CHAPTER V

DISCUSSING A SISTER-IN-LAW

"You remember my sister-in-law, don't you, Brandy?" was the question that Leslie Wrandall put to a friend one afternoon, as they sat drearily in a window of one of the fashionable up-town clubs, a little more than a year after the events described in the foregoing chapters. Drearily, I have said, for the reason that it was Sunday, and raining at that.

"I met Mrs. Wrandall a few years ago in Rome," said his companion, renewing interest in a conversation that had died some time before of its own exhaustion. "She's most attractive. I saw her but once.

I think it was at somebody's fete."

"She's returning to New York the end of the month," said Leslie.

"Been abroad for over a year. She had a villa at Nice this winter."

"I remember her quite well. I was of an age then to be particularly sensitive to female loveliness. If I'd been staying on in Rome, I should have screwed up the courage, I'm sure, to have asked her to sit for me."

"Lord love you, man, she's posed for half the painters in the world, it seems to me. Like the d.u.c.h.esses that Romney and those old chaps used to paint. It occurs to me those grand old dames did nothing but sit for portraits, year in and year out, all their lives. I don't see where they found time to scratch up the love affairs they're reported to have had. There always must have been some painter or other hanging around. I remember reading that the d.u.c.h.ess of--I can't remember the name--posed a hundred and sixty-nine times, for nearly as many painters. Sara's not so bad as all that, of course, but I don't exaggerate when I say she's been painted a dozen times--and hung in twice as many exhibits."

"I know," said the other with a smile. "I've seen a few of them."

"The best of them all is hanging in her place up in the country, old man. It's the one my brother liked. A Belgian fellow did it a couple of years ago. Never been exhibited, so of course you haven't seen it. Challis wouldn't consent to its being revealed to the vulgar gaze, he loved it so much."

"I like that," resented Brandon Booth, with a mild glare.

"Lot of common, vulgar people do hang about picture galleries, you will have to admit that, Brandy. They visit 'em in the winter time to get in where it's warm, and in the summer time they go because it's nice and shady. That's the sort I mean."

"What do you know about art or the people who--"

"I know all there is to know about it, old chap. Haven't we got Gainsboroughs, and Turners, and Constables, and Corots hanging all over the place? And a lot of others, too. Reynolds, Romney and Raeburn,--the three R's. And didn't I tag along with mother to picture dealers' shops and auctions when every blessed one of 'em was bought? I know ALL about it, let me tell you. I can tell you what kind of an 'atmosphere' a painting's got, with my eyes closed; and as for 'quality' and 'luminosity' and 'broadness' and 'handling,'

I know more this minute about such things than any auctioneer in the world. I am a past master at it, believe me. One can't go around buying paintings with his mother without getting a liberal education in art. She began taking me when I was ten years old. Challis wouldn't go, so she MADE me do it. Then I always had to go back with her when she wanted to exchange them for something else the dealer a.s.sured her she ought to have in our collection, and which invariably cost three times as much. No, my dear fellow, you are very much mistaken when you say that I don't know anything about art. I am a walking price-list of all the art this side of the Dresden gallery. You should not forget that we are a very old New York family. We've been collecting for over twenty years."

Both laughed. He liked Wrandall best when he affected mockery of this sort, although he was keenly alive to a certain breath of self-glorification in his raillery. Leslie felt a delicious sense of security in railing at family limitations: he knew that no one was likely to take him seriously.

"Nevertheless, your mother has some really fine paintings in the collection," proclaimed Booth amiably, also descending to sn.o.bbishness without really meaning to do so. He considered Velasquez to be the superior of all those mentioned by Wrandall, and there was the end to it, so far as he was concerned. It was ever a source of wonder to him that Mrs. Wrandall didn't "trade in" everything else she possessed for a single great Velasquez.

"Getting back to Sara,--my sister-in-law,--why don't you ask her to sit for you this summer? She's not going out, you know, and time will hang so heavily on her hands that she will even welcome another portrait agony."

"I can't ask her to--"

"I'll do the asking, if you say the word."

"Don't be an a.s.s."

"I'm quite willing to be one, if it will help you out, old man,"

said Leslie cheerfully.

"And make one of me as well, I suppose. She'd think me a frightful cub after all those other fellows. After Sargent, ME! Ho, ho! She'd laugh in my face."