The Long Lane's Turning Part 15

The afternoon wore on, station after station went by. The man in the rear seat sat with his eyes straight before him, moveless except as from time to time he lifted a bottle to his lips and drank thirstily, avidly. The frenzied pain was gone now, leaving only a dull ache, and gradually, very gradually, this too slipped away into the void. He was now once more the man who had fled in his motor from the face of a convict in a court-room, flying through the night in a jumbled dream, strung upon a headlong speed through vacuity.

Evening came, with the glamour of peach-blown valleys and honey-lipped hills, lying under pale stars against the sunset. Night fell, with its cooler breeze through the windows, its glimpses of quiet, watching woods, of white mists wreathing across the meadows, of yellow lights.

But Harry took no heed. Only hours later, when the train rolled into a great rotunda did he turn his head. He did not know where he was. He did not even wonder. He rose, kicked the emptied bottle under the seat, and left the train.

He went out of the station. It sat on a ridge above a great river and on the lower level he had a glimpse of a sordid purlieus of rambling streets, red-paned windows and gleaming doorways, the soiled earmarks of the city's slums.

He crossed the street and plunged aimlessly down a narrow alley toward the water-front.

CHAPTER XVII

LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

The potations in the smoking-car had had their first effect. Sevier had pa.s.sed from the jumbled dream now--was safe enisled in that strange fourth-dimensional empire into which he had first wandered during that wild night-ride in his motor, that region of tense consciousness that was yet without rule, in which every sense was acute, his brain clear as ice, but where impressions recorded themselves without co-ordination. Eye and ear drank in avidly each sight and sound, and he sniffed the thick smells as a hound sniffs a haunting but forgotten trail.

As he went further the dwindling signs of respectability vanished. He was now below the city's "dead-line" where, in segregated wantonness, vice and license unrolled their audacities fearless of the complaisant police regulations.

A hundred yards from the greasy docks lining the sluggish current from which a plumy mist was lifting, a wide screened doorway showed a blaze of electric-light upon a patch of saw-dust floor. Through it poured the tinny blare of a gramophone hooting a comic song, mingled with rumbling laughter and raised voices. It was a low-roofed, shambling building, planned for the delectation of the barge-man and the roustabout and now throbbing with their daily--and nightly--pleasures.

Harry halted before it.

"Tough joint, eh?" The voice fell suddenly at his elbow.

He turned. The speaker was red-cheeked and brisk, with dapper sophistication and inquisitiveness written all over him. His shining straw hat had a coloured band, there were white pearl b.u.t.tons on his patent-leather shoes and a natty stick swung lightly from his gloved fingers. "I can see you don't belong with that crowd," he said, nodding sagely toward the entrance.

"No," said Sevier. He was staring at the speaker with a penetrating intensity, thinking that, but for colouring and costume, they two somewhat resembled each other--speculating as to the slanting scar on the other's right cheek, that might have been the memento of a rusty nail or of a pet panther--thinking of these things and of a thousand things beside that were only remotely connected with either of them.

"Neither do I, but I take a high dive into it now and then. Let's go in and have a drink."

In Harry's middle distance another more decorous swing-door vibrated to and fro, with a sharp smell of hops, a rattle of gla.s.ses, a voice reckless but good-humoured--proposing a like libation. Beyond this in endless succession were openings and re-openings of a locked cabinet that had hung somewhere on a wall, and further yet, myriads of goblets, cut with shining prisms, reflecting rainbow colours on spotless napery.

A drink?

"Why not?" he said, and striking open the door, led the way into the noisy interior, reeking with stale odours, with strong tobacco-smoke, with carouse and profanity. He strode across the floor, shouldering his way unceremoniously through the press, and sat down at a small deal table that was unoccupied. His companion seated himself opposite. He was looking at Harry with critical admiration, noting his lithe athletic build and the certain, confident swing of his movements. His eye lighted.

"Gad!" he said, with a little laugh. "To tell the truth I wouldn't have cared to come in here alone, though I've been in a good many shady boozeries. Allow me to introduce myself. My name's John Stark--that's the name I play under, that is. I'm an actor. I'm trying out a new play, the 'Jail-bird.' Perhaps you've seen the bill-boards."

"Of course," said Harry. The t.i.tle sprang instantly into his mind, blazoned on a gaudy bill-board against a maple-shaded street:

"Do not fail to see this Talented Star In his Gripping Drama, _The Jail-Bird_."

It multiplied, stamping itself on a thousand walls, a chromatic procession tumbling into the distance. The other nodded in a self-satisfied way. "It's a great play. Got the real human dope in it. It'll go big, too. That's why I come to these places--to study 'business.' See that teamster with the pock-marked face and the tattoo on his arm? What a make-up that would be!"

The burly, half-drunken driver, in red-flannel shirt with a snake-whip in his armpit, his back to the bar, poured from a gurgling black bottle. "Hear what it says?" he hiccoughed--"'It's good--s'good--s'good--s'good--s'good!'"

John Stark withdrew his eyes from the fascinating study, as a waiter, in an ap.r.o.n that had in some remote epoch aspired to white, with a strip of soiled towelling thrown over one arm, set two thick gla.s.ses on the table, with a surly "well?"

"I'll take a silver fizz," said the actor.

"The same," said Sevier--"and be quick about it!"

The harsh admonition thrust across the noise. The phrase had no meaning to Sevier, it had been merely the echo of another bidding that he had given at some other time, in some other world, repeating itself now when the hidden spring of a.s.sociation was touched. But it brought a resentful glare from the waiter. The loungers standing nearest shuffled truculently, and the teamster by the bar turned an ugly look upon them. The man in the dingy ap.r.o.n thumped down a black demijohn on the table.

"Take it straight or not at all," he said in a surly tone.

Harry's companion poured both gla.s.ses. He leaned across the table with sparkling eyes. "I'm in the t.i.tle-role," he confided. "The story is like this. I'm a business man, and the other chap--he has a grudge against me--has me in his power. He's the Great What Ho--a regular top-notcher, plenty of money, a winner with the women, horses, steam-yacht, everything. The house he lives in was mine, but he's got it by trickery and seized it while I was abroad. I come back and find him in possession. But in the house--he doesn't know this, you see--hidden behind a panel in the library, are papers that will show him up and put him behind the bars. I've got to have those papers, and the only way is to get into the place and take them."

He paused and sipped from the gla.s.s before him, then resumed:

"Curious thing, luck. I've had no end of trouble getting up the scenery, but to-day I saw exactly the lay-out I want to picture--a whacking big house in this very town. Right in the heart of the city too, not a mile from here, but shut in from the road. Belongs to about the richest man in the place. I kodaked it for my scene-painter. Look here."

He took a pencil from his pocket and sketched rapidly on the deal table-top as he went on.

"It's set in trees and there's a wide, oval porch along the front--like this--fine old southern effect, eh?--with Cape Jessamine bushes under the windows. A long wing runs down one side--here. In there is the library. I come on in a kind of prologue, no lines--shadows and moonlight, town-hall clock striking off one side--you know. I'm desperate. I try the doors. They're locked, of course. But there's a little window on the second floor that's open. I climb up a trellis and crawl in. There I am in the house."

He stopped and emptied his gla.s.s.

"There's a two-minute dark--no curtain, but a quick change, then lights up and the stage shows the Great What Ho's library, with me on the threshold, for the opening scene. I get the papers from the panel, and just then--"

"Yes, yes," said Harry. He had been staring steadily at the other--staring with his outer eyes, but with that curious inner vision, which was the gift of the intoxicant he had drunk, seeing himself, detached and moving through the significant scene that was being sketched before him, his alert but liquor-bound mind filling in strange, lurid detail which rushed forward to crowd the obscure s.p.a.ces.

He reached forward and gripped the actor by the arm with a force that made him wince--"and then--"

A stillness had struck the noisier babble and Harry's mental connection on a sudden broke. A young woman in the red Jersey and poke-bonnet of the Salvation Army had pa.s.sed about the room and was now standing by the table. She stretched her tambourine. "If you please, gentlemen,"

she said.

Harry laid a silver half-dollar in her tambourine and his companion did the same, when the waiter who had served them spoke to her: "Clear out, you. You've got your money, now go."

"And be quick about it!" said Harry, distinctly.

The remark had not the excuse of proprietorship and it roused fury in the sluggish minds about them to whom the addition was extraneous and gratuitous, a smug insult of one who from his manner belonged to a cla.s.s that despised them, offered to one whose daily habit proved that she did not. With an oath the drunken teamster of the pock-marked visage lurched forward, rolling a red-flannel sleeve along a hairy biceps.

The dingy Ganymede thrust him back. "Leave him to me!" he ground savagely, and turning, struck at Harry with envenomed force.

The fist, however, did not reach home. Harry's brain and eye were working with the deadly precision of the practised athlete. The suggestion of combat was complete, and with sober caution and reason dead, the bodily mechanism rushed to meet it. There was a lightning-like parry--a crisp, smashing return blow. Then suddenly the room turned a shambles, a red surging ma.s.s of hands that tore, of thrown missiles, of shattering gla.s.s, through which sounded a shrill whistle and the tattoo of a thorn-baton on the pavement outside.

Two minutes later Harry stood unhurt in the open air, and a blue-jacket held the door against a cursing pandemonium. "_Run_, you fool!" he panted. "I can't hold it but a minute. _Run_!"

And Harry ran. Not from fear or dread, but in instant response to that mental spur, without reason, or logic, or conscious thought. The new mental formula for the present moment superseded the old. The dingy saloon, the effervescent young Thespian, the fight--all fell away, were gone, and there was only the rigid empty calm through which he sped, and far above him the sound of a wind like a silken sea. It was close on midnight, the more decorous streets into which he presently emerged deserted, for intermittent clouds were now blotting the moonlight and a sprinkle of rain was falling. The spa.r.s.e pedestrians stared or shrank away, but none followed, no patrolling guardian of the law forbade. He ran without direction or purpose, until suddenly--he halted.

He had come to the side of a great enclosure, the grounds of a mansion, surrounded by a high stone wall with tiled top, in which was set a gate with tall posts holding dim-lit yellow globes. It was not at these, however, that Harry was looking; his gaze went beyond, where, touched by the rainy moonlight, stretched the long facade of a Colonial house with a wide oval porch. At one side was a wing, with a lattice climbing over its doorway, and the damp air was full of the scent of jessamine.

He stiffened. The contours fell with fateful correspondence over another picture which had been etched on his brain that night with the sharp outlines of a photographic plate. The old spring had been touched, and the eerie mechanism was responding. It was his own house, but now it sheltered the Great What Ho, and in that wing was hidden the thing he must secure for his own salvation!

Harry entered the gate and crept across the lawn, warily, from bush to bush. In the curious dual-consciousness that seemed to divide his self into two independent yet identical ent.i.ties, he had no sensation of strangeness that he should already have made that slinking journey once before, that each detail should possess the quality of predestination.

In the shadow of the ivied walls he softly tried the front door. It was locked, but he had known it would be. He looked up; he had known what he should see--the small window in the wing, open, as he could see from the swaying of the light curtain in the air.

He crept to the lattice and deftly and softly drew himself up. No twig snapped, scarce a leaf rustled beneath his careful movements. In a moment he touched the sill of the open window and slid inside.