The Professor's Mystery Part 8

CHAPTER VIII

HOW WE MADE AN UNCONVENTIONAL JOURNEY TO TOWN

Very carefully, and wondering the while in a listless fashion why I should do so at all, I tore out the notice and put it carefully away in my pocketbook. I had the explanation now; I understood it all--the hidden ring at the end of the chain, and the shadow of which it was the symbol, the mystery and disturbance of the house, the continual pretexts to get rid of me, the effort to disguise any strangeness of appearance in the life of the family. And I understood why it was true that I must go away and utterly forget. And yet--was the explanation so perfect, after all? Mechanically I pulled the paper out of the drawer, and searched for the date. It was only three years back; but even that length of time would have made Lady a mere child when she was married.

She could not be very far beyond twenty now, certainly not more than twenty-two or three. And in any case, why should the marriage be concealed and the husband retained as a member of the family, masquerading as a brother? And how, after the ordinary announcement in the press, could the marriage have become a secret at all? Then once more the whispers and pointings of a score of abnormal circ.u.mstances, uncertain, suggestive, indefinite, crowded in upon my understanding, like the confusion of simultaneous voices. It was no use. I could not imagine what it all meant, and for the moment I was too sick and weary to wonder. The bare fact was more than enough; she was married and beyond my reach, and I must go away.

I went through a pantomime of supper, making the discovery that my appet.i.te was supplemented by an unquenchable thirst and an immeasurable desire for tobacco. After that I walked, read, made dull conversation with casual acquaintances--anything to kill the interminable time, and quiet for the moment that weary spirit of unrest which kept urging me to useless thought and unprofitable action, to examine my trouble as one irritates a trivial wound, to decide or do something where nothing was to be decided or to be done. An inhabitant of the nearest comfortless piazza chair contributed the only episode worth remembering.

"Say," he began, "do you remember that guinea that was here the other day and started the argument with the old gent out in front? Well, what did you make of that feller, anyway?"

"I don't know. He was drunk, I suppose, and got the wrong man."

"Well, now, you take it from me, there was more to it than that. Yes, sir, there's a shady story around there somewhere. You hear what I say."

"Is the man still around here?" I asked.

"Well, not now, he ain't. That's what I'm telling you. He hung about town for two or three days, I guess. Maybe he got after the old man some more. He was in here after a drink once, and the barkeep threw him out.

He's a good mixer, Harry is, men or drinks; but he don't like guineas.

Well, I don't go much on them foreigners, myself."

"Where does your shady story come in?"

"Well, now, that's just it. You listen. I was coming along the street the other night, and I pa.s.sed this guinea standing under a street lamp, talking to that Reid feller that lives up to Tabors'. Doc Reid, you know whom I mean? Well, I was going past and I heard Reid say: 'Now, you understand what you got to do,' he says, 'keep quiet and keep away. The minute you show up here again or give any trouble,' he says, 'the money stops. You understand that?' he says. And you can call me a liar if you like, but I swear I saw him slip the guinea a roll. Now, what do you know about that?"

I put him off as well as I could. Here was another point in the labyrinth, but I had no energy to think about it. I got away from the gossip at last only by taking refuge in my room. And the rest of the evening was a dreary nightmare of unreality which only expanded without changing when I tried to sleep. I tossed about endlessly, thinking thoughts that were not thoughts, dreaming evil dreams even while I watched the swollen shadows about the room and listened to the unmeaning voices and footsteps in the hallways. It seemed so much a part of this when some one pounded on my door and told me that I was wanted on the telephone, that it was a troublesome task to make me understand.

I pulled on a sweater and ran down-stairs, wondering who could have called me up at one in the morning. I was not left long in doubt.

"h.e.l.lo! This Mr. Crosby? h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo there! Mr. Crosby? h.e.l.lo!"

"Yes!" I said savagely, "what is it?"

"Doctor Reid talking. Can you--what? All right--hold the line a second."

Then Lady's voice: "Mr. Crosby? Listen: I have to go to New York in the machine now, right away. Can you come with me?"

"Can I--? Why, of course; but why doesn't--why don't you take some one else?"

"No one else can go. If you're not willing--"

"Of course I'm willing," I said, "if I can be of use."

"I knew you would. The car will be there for you in five minutes, or--wait: there's no need of waking up the whole inn. Walk up to the first street corner this way, and the car will meet you there."

Five minutes later I was standing on the corner, shivering with interrupted sleep, while four flaming yellow eyes swung toward me down the hill. It was the same big limousine I had noticed the night before.

I climbed in beside the chauffeur. With a clash and a grinding lurch the car swung around and pointed up the hill again, toward the Tabors'.

There was power and to spare, but I noticed that one cylinder was missing now and again.

"Your ignition isn't very steady," I said to the chauffeur. "What is it--valves?"

He turned and looked at me with supercilious respect. "Poor petrol, sir.

I fancy she'll run well enough, sir."

Lady came running out, veiled and m.u.f.fled. "Come inside," she said, as I sprang down to help her in, "I'd rather have you with me." The door slammed, and we were off with a jerk that threw us back against the deep leather cushions. For a few moments we flashed under lamps and sidled around corners to an accompaniment of growling brakes and squeaking springs; then we ran out upon the smooth macadam of the highway, and settled into our speed with a steady purr. Lady sat up in her corner and patted at her veil.

"It was very good of you to come," she said, "but I knew we could count on you. Here, take this thing--I don't want it."

It was a very serviceable revolver, cold and smooth as I slipped it out of its leather holster. I made sure that it was ready for use.

"It's perfectly ridiculous taking it along," she added. "We're not going on any desperate midnight errand. The mere time of night is the only thing that's even unconventional. But Walter wouldn't let me come without it."

I asked no questions. By this time I had learned better; and besides I did not greatly care what we were doing, or what was to happen next. I would be of service if I could, that was all. Since it was to be hopelessly, it might as well be blindly, too; and the sense of adventure was gone out of me. The car swayed and sidled gently to the irregular mutter of the engine and the drowsy whining of the gears. We might almost have been motionless, except when the flare of some pa.s.sing light swept across us, filling with an uncanny and sudden illumination the polished interior of the limousine, and showing me as by the glimpse of a lightning-flash the veiled and silent figure by my side. Here was romance beyond my wildest imagination: night, and hurry and mysterious need, the swift rush onward through the warm gloom, the womanhood of the breathing shadow so close to me, whose thought I could not know, whose anxiety I could not seek to fathom, whose trouble I could only help by doing ignorantly what she asked of me and then leaving her in other hands. And all this that should have stirred me to chivalry seemed only dull and weary, a thankless task. The lines of _The Last Ride Together_ began running in my mind, and I turned them over and over, trying vaguely to fill in forgotten phrases, until the rocking of the car reminded me where I was, and the sardonic incongruity of it jarred me back to earth. It was always like that: the deed a parody of the dream, the details of actual happenings making mouths at the truth that lay behind them, life sneering at itself. Here were two lovers hurrying together through the night, held silent by a secret and bound by a blind trust. And they were riding through Westchester in a motor-car, and the thought of a fussy medical man with a ba.s.s voice was the naked sword which lay between them.

A trolley car, looking like a huge and luminous caterpillar, hung alongside us for a moment, then fell behind. Our engine had not been running perfectly from the first; and now as we jolted over a section of newly mended road and began to climb a b.u.mpy hill, the trouble suddenly became so much worse that it looked as though it meant delay. Impure gasolene does not make one cylinder miss fire regularly for many revolutions and then explode once or twice with a croupy grunt.

"There's something the matter with the car," said Lady nervously. "I hope we're not going to break down. We mustn't break down."

"The chauffeur says it's the gasolene," I answered, "but I don't believe it. It's ignition by the sound."

"Do you know anything about a car?"

"A little," I said; and as we drew up at the side of the road, I was out and in front of the machine almost before the chauffeur had lumbered from his seat. He got out his electric lamp, and began tinkering with the carburetor.

"Hold on a minute," I said. "If you ball up that adjustment, it may take half an hour to get it right again. Are you sure it isn't ignition?"

"Ignition's all right, sir," he grunted; "she's getting too much gas."

"Then why are three of your cylinders all right and one all wrong?" I snapped. "Come around here with that lamp."

Once the bonnet was open it was not hard to find the trouble. The nut which held one of the wires to its connection on the magneto had dropped off, and the end of the wire was hanging loose, connecting only when the vibration of the car swung it against the binding-post. The chauffeur did not appear grieved.

"We're dished," he remarked cheerfully. "I've no other nut like that."

"It's probably in the underpan," I retorted. We got the pan off, and after some search in the puddle of grimy grease, were fortunate enough to find it. A moment later we were throbbing steadily on our way.

"That man of yours isn't exactly delighted with his work," I commented.

"I don't blame him. He isn't supposed to be waked up for forty-mile trips in the middle of the night, and he's English and worships his habits. Are we all right now?"

"Yes; it wasn't anything. We're nearly there now; there's Woodlawn."

She did not speak again for some time, and I began to wonder if I had again trodden upon trouble. I seemed fated to do so at every turn. But presently she broke in with a comfortable triviality.

"Look here, why don't you smoke if you want to? I forgot all about it, but of course you may. I don't mind."

I had not noticed it before, but the cigarette was exactly what I wanted. The bodily comfort balanced things again, and made me feel at home with the situation. We ran down Riverside Drive, the dark bulk of the city on our left, and on our right the glimmering breadth of the Hudson, streaked with yellow gleams. Thence we crossed over and continued on down Fifth Avenue, between blank houses and unnatural lights, the occasional clack of hoofs and hollow growl of wheels accentuating the unwonted stillness. I had somehow taken it for granted that we were going for a doctor. But when we pa.s.sed Madison Square and kept on south along Broadway, that errand became unlikely; and when we turned eastward over the rough cobbles of narrow side streets, I was in a state of blank wonder. We ran slowly, lurching and b.u.mping, through interminable chasms of squalor where iron railings mounted to the doors and clots of bedding hung from open windows; where evil odors hung and drifted like clouds, and a sick heat lay prisoned between wall and pavement, and stragglers turned to stare after us as we went by. Now and then we crossed some wider thoroughfare with its noise of cars and tangle of sagging wires overhead, and signs in foreign tongues under the corner lights. And at last we came into a city of dreadful sleep, dim and deserted and still. The scattered lamps were only yellow splotches in the dusk, the stores were barred and bared, and there was no human thing in sight save here and there a huddle of grimy clothes under the half shelter of a doorway. Puffs of salt air from the river troubled the stagnant mixture of fish, leather and stale beer.

We stopped before a narrow doorway pinched sidewise between two shop windows like a fish's mouth. Lady leaned across me to scan the bleak windows above.