The Lighted Way Part 29

Arnold was dismissed with a pleasant nod, and pa.s.sed out into the streets, now emptying fast. He walked slowly back to his rooms.

Already the sense of unwonted excitement was pa.s.sing. Sabatini's strong, calm personality was like a wonderful antidote. After all, it was not his affair. It was possible, after all, that the man was an ordinary burglar. And yet, if so, what was Isaac doing with him?

He glanced in front of him to where the lights of the two great hotels flared up to the sky. Somewhere just short of them, before the window of her room, Ruth would be sitting watching. He quickened his steps. Perhaps he should find her before he went to bed. Perhaps he might even see Isaac come in!

Big Ben was striking the half-hour past midnight as Arnold stood on the top landing of the house at the corner of Adam Street, and listened. To the right was his own bare apartment; on the left, the rooms where Isaac and Ruth lived together. He struck a match and looked into his own apartment. There was a note twisted up for him on his table, scribbled in pencil on a half sheet of paper. He opened it and read:

If you are not too late, will you knock at the door and wish me good night? Isaac will be late. Perhaps he will not be home at all.

He stepped back and knocked softly at the opposite door. In a moment or two he heard the sound of her stick. She opened the door and came out. Her eyes shone through the darkness at him but her face was white and strained. He shook his head.

"Ruth," he said, "you heard the time? And you promised to go to bed at ten o'clock!"

She smiled. He pa.s.sed his arm around her, holding her up.

"To-night I was afraid," she whispered. "I do not know what it was but there seemed to be strange voices about everywhere. I was afraid for Isaac and afraid for you."

"My dear girl," he laughed, "what was there to fear for me? I had a very good dinner with a very charming man. Afterwards, we went to a music-hall for a short time, I went back to his rooms, and here I am, just in time to wish you good night. What could the voices have to tell you about that?"

She shook her head.

"Sometimes," she said, "there is danger in the simplest things one does. I don't understand what it is," she went on, a little wearily, "but I feel that I am losing you, you are slipping away, and day by day Isaac gets more mysterious, and when he comes home sometimes his face is like the face of a wolf. There is a new desire born in him, and I am afraid. I think that if I am left alone here many more nights like this, I shall go mad. I tried to undress, Arnie, but I couldn't. I threw myself down on the bed and I had to bite my handkerchief. I have been trembling. Oh, if you could hear those voices! If you could understand the fears that are nameless, how terrible they are!"

She was shaking all over. He pa.s.sed his other arm around her and lifted her up.

"Come and sit with me in my room for a little time," he said. "I will carry you back presently."

She kissed him on the forehead.

"Dear Arnold!" she whispered. "For a few minutes, then--not too long. To-night I am afraid. Always I feel that something will happen. Tell me this?"

"What is it, dear?"

"Why should Isaac press me so hard to tell him where you were going to-night? You pa.s.sed him on the stairs, didn't you?"

Arnold nodded.

"He was with another man," he said, with a little shiver. "Did that man come up to his rooms?"

"They both came in together," Ruth said. "They talked in a corner for some time. The man who was with Isaac seemed terrified about something. Then Isaac came over to me and asked about you."

"What did you tell him?" Arnold asked.

"I thought it best to know nothing at all," she replied. "I simply said that you were going to have dinner with some of your new friends."

"Does he know who they are?"

Ruth nodded.

"Yes, we have spoken of that together," she admitted. "I had to tell him of your good fortune. He knows how well you have been getting on with Mr. and Mrs. Weatherley. Listen!--is that some one coming?"

He turned around with her still in his arms, and started so violently that if her fingers had not been locked behind his neck he must have dropped her. Within a few feet of them was Isaac. He had come up those five flights of stone steps without making a sound.

Even in that first second or two of amazement, Arnold noticed that he was wearing canvas shoes with rubber soles. He stood with his long fingers gripping the worn bal.u.s.trade, only two steps below them, and his face was like the face of some snarling animal.

"Ruth," he demanded, hoa.r.s.ely, "what are you doing out here at this time of night--with him?"

She slipped from Arnold's arms and leaned on her stick. To all appearance, she was the least discomposed of the three.

"Isaac," she answered, "Uncle Isaac, I was lonely--lonely and terrified. You left me so strangely, and it is so silent up here. I left a little note and asked Arnold, when he came home, to bid me good night. He knocked at my door two minutes ago."

Isaac threw open the door of their apartments.

"Get in," he ordered. "I'll have an end put to it, Ruth. Look at him!" he cried, mockingly, pointing to Arnold's evening clothes.

"What sort of a friend is that, do you think, for us? He wears the fetters of his cla.s.s. He is a hanger-on at the tables of our enemies."

"You can abuse me as much as you like," Arnold replied, calmly, "and I shall still believe that I am an honest man. Are you, Isaac?"

Isaac's eyes flashed venom.

"Honesty! What is honesty?" he snarled. "What is it, I ask you? Is the millionaire honest who keeps the laws because he has no call to break them? Is that honesty? Is he a better man than the father who steals to feed his hungry children? Is the one honest and the other a thief? You smug hypocrite!"

Arnold was silent for a moment. It flashed into his mind that here, from the other side, came very nearly the same doctrine as Sabatini had preached to him across his rose-shaded dining table.

"It is too late to argue with you, Isaac," he said, pleasantly.

"Besides, I think that you and I are too far apart. But you must leave me Ruth for my little friend. She would be lonely without me, and I can do her no harm."

Isaac opened his lips,--lips that were set in an ugly sneer--but he met the steady fire of Arnold's eyes, and the words he would have spoken remained unsaid.

"Get to your room, then," he ordered.

He pa.s.sed on as though to enter his own apartments. Then suddenly he stopped and listened. There was the sound of a footstep, a heavy, marching footstep, coming along the Terrace below. With another look now upon his face, he slunk to the window and peered down. The footsteps came nearer and nearer, and Arnold could hear him breathing like a hunted animal. Then they pa.s.sed, and he stood up, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

"I have been hurrying," he muttered, half apologetically. "We had a crowded meeting. Good night!"

He turned into his rooms and closed the door. Arnold looked after him for a moment and then up the street below. When he turned into his own rooms, he was little enough inclined for sleep. He drew up his battered chair to the window, threw it open, and sat looking out. The bridge and the river were alike silent now. The sky signs had gone, the murky darkness blotted out the whole scene, against which the curving arc of lights shone with a fitful, ghostly light.

For a moment his fancy served him an evil trick. He saw the barge with the blood-red sails. A cargo of evil beings thronged its side.

He saw their faces leering at him. Sabatini was there, standing at the helm, calm and scornful. There was the dead man and Isaac, Groves the butler, Fenella herself--pale as death, her hands clasping at her bosom as though in pain. Arnold turned, shivering, away; his head sank into his hands. It seemed to him that poison had crept into those dreams.

CHAPTER XVIII

DISCUSSING THE MYSTERY

At precisely half-past nine the next morning, Mr. Weatherley entered his office in Tooley Street. His appearance, as he pa.s.sed through the outer office, gave rise to some comment.

"The governor looks quite himself again," young Tidey remarked, turning round on his stool.