The Professor's Mystery Part 4

"Well?" he asked, drawing his white brows together.

I had remembered Miss Tabor's version of the accident. "Go on," I said, "let me hear the whole of this first."

"We needn't discuss terms; the facts are that you throw aside your arrangements very conspicuously; that you follow a young lady entirely out of your way; and that you bring her home at an unreasonable hour, after wandering or loitering about the country. In any case this would have been officious and inconsiderate. But in the case of a man with such a past as yours, it might compromise her seriously. To have you staying at the house afterward was out of the question."

This was too much. "What do you mean?" I said. "There's nothing the matter with my past. I've nothing whatever to be ashamed of, and this is the first time in my life I've been accused of any such thing. My university position is proof enough of that. It's a mistake or an infernal slander."

He looked me straight in the eye. "I know more about you, Mr. Crosby, than you were prepared for," he said quietly. "Don't waste time in posturing."

"I beg your pardon," I retorted; "you know nothing about me, but you've said decidedly more than one gentleman can say to another without explaining himself. We're two men together. Be so good as to tell me just what you charge me with."

I had risen from my chair, struggling hard for enough self-control to make my words carry conviction. Mr. Tabor sat unmoved while he deliberately lighted a cigar, watching me over the end of it.

"I have no desire to dig over your life with you," he said, "any more than I have to continue your acquaintance. I came here to tell you why our invitation to you was withdrawn. Well, I've done so; you have an evil reputation. That's all."

"Excuse me, but that isn't all. It isn't true, and--"

"There is just one more point," he went on; "when you arrived, of course none of us realized who you were or how you had come. Later, when we understood the facts, you would not, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, have left until this morning. But Mrs. Tabor was so much excited over the matter that I saw fit to relieve her immediately, at the cost of disturbing your sleep. I owe you an apology for that, and for that only."

"Look here, Mr. Tabor," said I, more calmly, "I don't know what you have been told about me, but if it's dishonorable it's a d.a.m.ned lie. Now, I'll wait here while you make any inquiries you like. I'll put you in communication with anybody you choose. And when you've looked me up and are satisfied, I shall expect a very complete apology for this whole matter."

"Thank you," he answered, "I am quite satisfied with my present information. I have no further curiosity. And now perhaps I have taken enough of your time." He rose.

Then I lost my temper. "That's altogether too thin!" I cried. "I'm received as your guest, and then I'm locked into my room. I'm sent away in the middle of the night, and told not to ask why. You explain it on the absurd ground that I'm a disreputable character, and then you won't either specify your charges or investigate them. I believe you are making up the whole story to cover something in your own house; and if you were a younger man I'd have it out of you."

While I was speaking he had turned composedly to pick up his hat and stick. He faced me now without a quiver of the eyes.

"Don't bl.u.s.ter, Mr. Crosby," he said slowly, uncovering the tip of one yellow tooth in the faintest suspicion of a smile, "it isn't any real use. Well, I won't offer to shake hands, but I'll wish you a pleasant summer after you've forgotten this row. Shall I go first?"

If there was anything more to say, I was too angry to think of it.

"After you," I said through shut jaws. "Good morning."

I followed him down to the veranda where we went through a comedy of leave-taking for the benefit of the people in the wicker chairs. At the corner of the building, discreet swinging doors gave entrance to the bar; and as Mr. Tabor started down the drive, there came from within a stream of savage gutturals and the squeak and clatter of an over-tilted chair. A stocky fellow in a flannel shirt lurched through the swinging doors and followed him at a clumsy run, cursing in a tangle of English and Italian so rapid and furious that by the ear alone I should have thought half a dozen people were involved. It had the multiplied brilliancy of a virtuoso's piano playing. Of the dispute which followed, the words were indistinguishable; but there was no question that each was threatening the other. The Italian danced and raved and gesticulated, while Mr. Tabor pointed a steady forefinger and retorted in low and frosty monosyllables. And presently the foreigner slouched back into the bar, which immediately filled with babbling bystanders. I followed to find him standing physically with his foot upon the low rail, and metaphorically with his back against the wall. He was the same man that had pursued our trolley-car on the day previous; a medium-sized, stocky, leather-colored rascal in a shiny black suit and blue flannel shirt, with a blue fur upon his face, and blue tattoo-marks on his hairy hands.

Public opinion, led by the bartender, was against him to the point of throwing him out or sending for the police; and his attempts at a defense were rendered unintelligible by volubility and by the strangest mixture of languages I ever heard in my life. Imagine a slightly drunk and thoroughly excited Neapolitan speaking broken English with an Irish brogue, and you may have some faint impression of the effect. His muddy blur of intonations was impossible to follow; and I tried him in Italian, becoming thereby a person of authority and interest. He understood me readily enough, but his own spattering patois gave me a good deal of trouble. By what I could make out, he was a sailor, formerly on ships owned by Mr. Tabor; and Mr. Tabor had discharged him and had kidnapped his wife. This sounded puzzling enough; but I could get nothing else out of him; and my further questions brought forth only angry reiterations and indefinite vows to have justice at any price.

Finally I persuaded the bartender to give him one more drink on condition that he went away immediately, and satisfied the crowd with some patched-up story of a hated employer whose resemblance to Mr. Tabor had caused an unfortunate mistake.

CHAPTER V

BESIDE THE SUMMER SEA: AN INTERLUDE

If I had been at my wits' end before, I was now beyond it, in such a chaos of puzzled anger that I could not even think reasonably, much less come to sensible conclusions. The Italian sailor with his impossible charge against Mr. Tabor's own impossible charge against me, were new elements which might or might not work into the situation; but at least I could not place them now; nor, for want of a motive that would bear dissection, was I ready to confess my own desire to stay on the ground until I had seen the matter through. I would go away to the sanity of the seaside, and give the vexations of the last few days time to clear.

The whole experience had been so strange that I must have more perspective through which to view it clearly; and I could see nothing to gain by haste. For all that, I was perfectly clear that at length everything must come out right. Not that I could define to myself exactly what "coming out right" would mean, except making Mr. Tabor admit himself outrageously mistaken, and his daughter--but it was better not to think about his daughter; unless I was ready to risk thinking too much about her. The very memory of her vivid face in the car-window, of her quizzical impertinences on the way, the sight of her lying motionless in the unnatural meadow, and most poignant of all, her distressed and shrouded beauty in the dim hall, lit up the last few hours as with the glamour of a dream broken suddenly by a nightmare monstrous and unconvincing. She must be put aside if possible with the rest until I could see clearly. Bob Ainslie and Mrs. Bob, boating, bathing, golf, and tennis, should be my devouring interests for the next week. After that--we should see.

For a couple of miles my car traveled through open country; then with the Sound on its left, pa.s.sed through small wooded patches that gave way continually to open glades where lawns from little cottages and great ran down to the water's edge. My destined hostelry, I remembered, flourished under the original name of "Bellevue." I did not especially pine for it, with its green-lined matting, white enameled furniture, and chattering piazzas; but it had the unquestionable advantage of being only a couple of hundred yards from the Ainslies' cottage. There I hurried into my flannels and set forth in search of Bob, whom I found playing the gentle game of croquet with himself, the pink ball against the green. When he saw me, he gave a viking whoop that brought Mrs.

Ainslie from her chair upon the veranda, while he executed a solemn war-dance around me.

"Where, O where are the Hebrew children?" he chanted, "Safe now in the promised land--where's your bag?"

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Crosby?" said Mrs. Ainslie. "Bob, what on earth will the neighbors think of you? And Mr. Crosby will hardly like being called a Hebrew--not that I have anything against the Hebrews. They are really a very fine people, but--"

"But, my dear, you are talking nonsense. Laurie, where is that bag? Or Heaven grant it be a trunk."

"It's a bag," I said, "and I left it in my room at the Bellevue, and a very good room it is."

"Bellefiddlesticks," Bob snorted. "You go back to that whited caravansary and wrest away your belongings and come over here. We are going to house-party in a couple of days, and we need you in our business. Your room is now southeast corner second floor, beautiful view of the Sound or within sound of the view--whichever you please."

"You are an idiot, but I love you," said I. "Nevertheless, I'm going to stay where I am. Can't be bothered with house parties. I came down here for some exercise."

"I think you look tired," Mrs. Ainslie put in thoughtfully.

"He looks sulky to me," said Bob. "All right, stay where you are until you feel the need of a decent bed. Bet I can beat you at croquet and give you two wickets."

"You are a fattening, indolent person," I said. "What I want, and what you stand in crying need of, is exercise," and I dragged him off to the hotel tennis-courts.

I was very sure in my own mind that I wanted the scuffling solitude of a hotel. My temper felt unsettled, and the last people in the world I wanted to meet were a lot of conversational visitors. Bob had a hard future cut out for him, and indeed for three days I led him a life that must have nearly killed him. Perhaps he may have scented some trouble behind my unusual energy, for he stuck to me like a man losing to me at tennis, beating me in long games of golf, bathing with me in the morning, and taking an oar as we rowed Mrs. Bob about in the evening.

Miss Tabor had spoken of a coming visit; but of course after the disturbances in her home she would have abandoned all plans. And I certainly did not care to start the bantering flood of questions which I knew Bob could not restrain should I show even the mildest curiosity about her coming. And yet she came. I had come over prepared to drag Bob to the altar of another strenuous day, and I found her sitting alone on the veranda as quietly at ease as though nothing had happened. I was not even sure that she looked tired; certainly she looked serene. She stood up and shook hands with me smilingly. I thought the blue veins throbbed a trifle in her throat, but her manner was frankly free from embarra.s.sment.

"You are getting a very seaside color, Mr. Crosby," she said. "Your vacation must be agreeing with you."

I could not answer for a moment; then, as she drew her hand from mine, "What have I done?" I stammered. "What was it all about? Did you too really believe--"

I stopped, for she was looking coldly past me, her face blank and her eyebrows raised.

"I beg your pardon," I said, taken utterly aback. Her silence seemed to strike across me like a blow. "I beg your pardon, Miss Tabor," and I swung upon my heel.

When I reached the steps, she called after me.

"Mr. Crosby!" I turned. "Bob wants to know why we shouldn't all play tennis together. He thinks that he and Mary can beat us."

I stood amazed. She was looking at me gaily, almost provokingly, every trace of coldness gone from the eyes that looked frankly into mine. She moved mentally too fast for me. I could read nothing but the end of our friendship in her look of a moment ago; and now she spoke as if no shadow of mystery or misunderstanding had ever fallen between us. Of course, the surface of it was that I had blundered, and that she had taken the only way of showing me that my memories of her trouble must be really forgotten. The last few days were never to have been.

The Ainslies came out of the door together. "And you never told us that you had met Miss Tabor last Christmas," said Bob. "I call that rather cool. I just mentioned you last night, and she asked all sorts of questions about how long you had been here and how long you expected to stay. For my part, I think you must have made quite an impression."

"Indeed he has," laughed Miss Tabor. "Do you know, Mary, Mr. Crosby is the only thoroughly frivolous inst.i.tution of learning I ever saw. He never spoke a word all Christmas that added to the party's fund of information, except to tell us of a new and a more indigestible way to make Welsh rarebit."

Evidently Christmas was to be the last and only time that we had met. I thanked fate and my own discomfiture that I had let fall no word to the Ainslies and we went off to our tennis. We won our game rather easily.

Miss Tabor played a shade better than the average woman, covering her court with a forethoughtful ease that did the work without wasting exertion. She seemed not athletic, but to do outdoor things as some other woman might move through a ball-room. When we had finished playing, Bob was a dripping ruin, and Mrs. Ainslie and I vigorously hot; but Miss Tabor, who had done no less than her share, laid aside her racquet as coolly as she had taken it up.

All the way down to the beach she kept the three of us in such a shout of laughter that staider people glanced aside at us. I made the change into a bathing-suit with abandoned haste, yet I found her waiting. The sea was evidently a pa.s.sion with her as it was with me. Her eyes were shining with excitement, her head thrown a little back, and all her slim body, tender in every graceful line, was vibrant with the thrill of the salt air. She gave me her hand as a child might have done, and we turned up the beach, running lightly until the voices of the bathers died behind us.

Suddenly she stopped. "Do you feel that way about it, too?" she asked.

"What way? As if the first plunge of the year were a sort of sacred rite?"