The House of Mystery Part 17

"Will you answer me?"

A blush ran over her exquisite whiteness.

"I have to remember," she said, "that perhaps I once gave you the right to ask such things of me. Last night I went to bed just after dinner."

"Exactly when?"

"A little after eight. I have been tired lately. Aunt Paula saw that I went to sleep."

"Is that all?" sharply.

"Why, yes. I slept heavily. The old sleep. The one which leaves me tired."

"You did not get up?"

"I am beginning to question your right to--"

"But answer me--_Did you wake?_"

"No. I slept until seven this morning. Walter, Walter--" she had never used his Christian name before, and at the moment it struck him only as one of her Circe arts--"you are cruel! What do you mean by this? Why do you trouble me so?"

Now that she had lied in his face, he felt the blood surging scarlet behind his eyes. It came to him that, if he remained a moment longer, he should lose all control. Without another word, without a backward look, he turned and walked away.

"Walter!" she called after him, and again, "Walter! Don't go!"

But he was running top speed down the footpath.

When he stopped, from growing weariness of soul as much as from physical exhaustion, he was on a cross street leading into Sixth Avenue. The tinsel front of a saloon rose before him. He tore through the swinging doors, ordered a drink of whiskey and then another. It might have been so much water, for all it either fed or quenched the fire within him. With some instinct to go back to his own private hole of misery, he took a street car. But he found it impossible to sit still. He got down after three blocks, found another saloon, took another drink. This, too, evaporated in the feverish heat engendered by his sleepless night. But it did afford an idea, a plan. He would get drunk--for the first time in his life, get blind, staggering drunk.

When he recovered from that, time would have dimmed the misery a little; he would be able to endure. Just now, he must get drunk or die.

Alone and in broad daylight, he tried it. From, the corner saloons of the Upper West Side to the dives of the Bowery, he poured in whiskey and yet more whiskey. Nothing happened; positively nothing. The fire within burned as fiercely as ever, the misery beat as keenly against his temples. He tried his voice; he was speaking clearly. Once he ran down the open asphalt of a water-front street; all his muscular control remained. The most that liquor did was to spread a slight fog over his senses, so that he seemed to be seeing through a veil, hearing through a part.i.tion.

On the approach of night, the effect struck him all at once. It came in a wave of drowsiness, a delicious sense that his trouble, still there, weighed lightly upon him--did not matter. He was sitting in Madison Square when he realized this effect. He could sleep now. Thank G.o.d for that! He turned toward the club, walking on the rosy airs of reaction.

As he approached the club door, he was aware that a woman had disengaged herself from the crowd across the street, was hurrying toward him. At that moment, a hall-boy dived from the entrance, and grabbed his arm urgently but respectfully.

"That woman's been asking for you since four--when we chased her away she laid for you--if you want to get inside--"

"Young man," said the voice of Rosalie Le Grange across his shoulder, "young man, Dr. Blake wants to see me as much as I want to see him an'

more. Now you jest leave go of him, and you Dr. Blake, come right along with me, or I'll make a scene and scandal right here in front of the club."

The hall-boy, with the exaggerated desire to avoid scandal which marks the perfect club servant, fell away. As for Dr. Blake, this seemed the line of least resistance. Life and death, misery and happiness--all looked equally dim and rosy.

Mme. Le Grange said nothing until they were three doors away. Under the marquee of a restaurant, she stopped, whirled Blake, whom she still held by an arm, within the entrance.

"You've been drinkin'," she said. "Now don't talk back. The question in my mind is whether you're clear enough in your head to understand what I've got to say, because it's something you want to hear straight and quick. See that table over in the corner? Let's see you walk to it and take off your hat and pull out a chair for me an' tell the waiter we won't eat till the rest of our party comes. If you can do that, you can listen to me."

Blake, feeling that someone else was going through these motions, obeyed.

"Legs are straight," commented Rosalie Le Grange as she settled herself and picked at her glove b.u.t.tons. "How's your head? Are you takin' in what I tell you?"

"Yes. I hear you. Why won't you leave me alone?"

"Tongue's pretty straight, too. Can't have much in you, though you do look like the last whisper of a misspent life. Well, men can't cry just when they want to, though a woman knows they cry oftener than any _man_ ever sees. You have to take it out in booze."

Blake heard his own voice, far away, saying:

"What did you come for?"

"You'll know soon enough. If I didn't have the patience of an angel I'd never have waited. Gee, those gentlemen's clubs is exclusive! Now I want you to remember you're drunk and keep quiet and not hurry me. I've got things to tell you. Miss Markham came in from a walk this morning--"

Dr. Blake saw his own hand lift in a gesture of repulsion, heard his own voice say:

"I don't want to hear about her."

"Will you kindly remember," said Rosalie Le Grange, "that you're supposed to be drunk? She came in from a walk this morning about half past ten, in a worse state than I ever saw her. I didn't much care, way I felt about her then--you know--now let me go my own way. Mrs. Markham was shut in her room all the morning. I was busy packing--I was getting ready to send in my notice but didn't, thank our stars--an' I didn't run onto her but once or twice. She was movin' about the house, and her face was like death.

"Just before lunch, I came down to the library, lookin' for a sewin'

basket. Mrs. Markham was at the table, writin' a note. In meanders Annette Markham an' begins to pull out the books in the library, listless. She'd open one, flip the pages, put it back and open another.

She kept that up quite some time. I wasn't noticing special until she took out three or four together, reached into the s.p.a.ce they left and pulled out a sizable gray book that had fallen down behind the stock--or been put there!

"Mrs. Markham had just looked up, and I saw her git stiff. She spoke quick--'Annette!'--jest like that--sharp, you know. Annette looked at her. Mrs. Markham reached over and took the book away. The girl, never looked down at it again, I can swear to that--she was starin' straight at her aunt. Mrs. Markham dropped the book on the table, but she put her elbows on it, and said: 'I'd been hunting everywhere for that--I'm glad you found it.' Annette never said a word, never tried to get the book back; she jest went on rummaging.

"Well, one thing was clear. Mrs. Markham didn't want her to git as much as a sight of that book. Why? It was about the funniest little thing I'd seen in that house. Better believe I found business in the front parlor where I could keep my eyes on 'em. After a minute or two, Annette walked out, listless as ever. Soon as her back was turned, Mrs.

Markham went to the desk an' locked the book in the top drawer.

"It was an hour before the coast was clear for me to git into the parlor and open that lock with a skeleton key an' a hairpin. An' when I seen the t.i.tle of that book--well it got as clear--"

Blake saw, through the veil above his sight, that Rosalie's face had broken out dimples and sparkles as a yacht breaks out flags. It irritated him remotely.

"What has that to do with the case?" he asked; and then, weakly, "I don't want to hear about it."

"If I was to tell you," persisted Rosalie rolling the sweets of revelation under her tongue, "that jest the name of the book in the secretary showed your girl was all right and you and I was fools, what would you say?"

The veil lifted from Blake. It was he himself who had risen from his chair, was leaning over the table, was asking:

"What do you mean? Tell me--what do you mean?"

Rosalie herself rose, leaned over to meet him, and whispered four words in his ear.

"See!" she added aloud. "See!"

Blake fell back into his chair with a thump.

"I, a doctor and a man of science and I never thought once of that!

What a d.a.m.ned fool I was!"

"_We_ was," amended Rosalie Le Grange.