The Man in Lower Ten, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
CONTENTS
I I GO TO PITTSBURG
II A TORN TELEGRAM
III ACROSS THE AISLE
IV NUMBERS SEVEN AND NINE
V THE WOMAN IN THE NEXT CAR
VI THE GIRL IN BLUE
VII A FINE GOLD CHAIN
VIII THE SECOND SECTION
IX THE HALCYON BREAKFAST
X MISS WEST'S REQUEST
XI THE NAME WAS SULLIVAN
XII THE GOLD BAG
XIII FADED ROSES
XIV THE TRAP-DOOR
XV THE CINEMATOGRAPH
XVI THE SHADOW OF A GIRL
XVII AT THE FARM-HOUSE AGAIN
XVIII A NEW WORLD
XIX AT THE TABLE NEXT
XX THE NOTES AND A BARGAIN
XXI MCKNIGHT'S THEORY
XXII AT THE BOARDING-HOUSE
XXIII A NIGHT AT THE LAURELS
XXIV HIS WIFE'S FATHER
XXV AT THE STATION
XXVI ON TO RICHMOND
XXVII THE SEA, THE SAND, THE STARS
XXVIII ALISON'S STORY
XXIX IN THE DINING-ROOM
XXX FINER DETAILS
XXXI AND ONLY ONE ARM
THE MAN IN LOWER TEN
CHAPTER I
I GO TO PITTSBURG
McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business.
I never liked it, and since the strange case of the man in lower ten,
I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can
build up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three
entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your
faith in circumstantial evidence dies of overcrowding. I never see
a shivering, white-faced wretch in the prisoners' dock that I do not
hark back with shuddering horror to the strange events on the
Pullman car Ontario, between Washington and Pittsburg, on the night
of September ninth, last.
McKnight could tell the story a great deal better than I, although
he can not spell three consecutive words correctly. But, while he
has imagination and humor, he is lazy.
"It didn't happen to me, anyhow," he protested, when I put it up to
him. "And nobody cares for second-hand thrills. Besides, you want
the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I'm no hand for that.
I'm a lawyer."
So am I, although there have been times when my assumption in that
particular has been disputed. I am unmarried, and just old enough
to dance with the grown-up little sisters of the girls I used to
know. I am fond of outdoors, prefer horses to the aforesaid
grown-up little sisters, am without sentiment (am crossed out and
was substituted.-Ed.) and completely ruled and frequently routed by
my housekeeper, an elderly widow.
In fact, of all the men of my acquaintance, I was probably the most
prosaic, the least adventurous, the one man in a hundred who would
be likely to go without a deviation from the normal through the
orderly procession of the seasons, summer suits to winter flannels,
golf to bridge.
So it was a queer freak of the demons of chance to perch on my
unsusceptible thirty-year-old chest, tie me up with a crime, ticket
me with a love affair, and start me on that sensational and not
always respectable journey that ended so surprisingly less than
three weeks later in the firm's private office. It had been the
most remarkable period of my life. I would neither give it up nor
live it again under any inducement, and yet all that I lost was
some twenty yards off my drive!
It was really McKnight's turn to make the next journey. I had a
tournament at Chevy Chase for Saturday, and a short yacht cruise
planned for Sunday, and when a man has been grinding at statute law
for a week, he needs relaxation. But McKnight begged off. It was
not the first time he had shirked that summer in order to run down
to Richmond, and I was surly about it. But this time he had a new
excuse. "I wouldn't be able to look after the business if I did
go," he said. He has a sort of wide-eyed frankness that makes one
ashamed to doubt him. "I'm always car sick crossing the mountains.
It's a fact, Lollie. See-sawing over the peaks does it. Why,
crossing the Alleghany Mountains has the Gulf Stream to Bermuda
beaten to a frazzle."
So I gave him up finally and went home to pack. He came later in
the evening with his machine, the Cannonball, to take me to the
station, and he brought the forged notes in the Bronson case.
"Guard them with your life," he warned me. "They are more precious
than honor. Sew them in your chest protector, or wherever people
keep valuables. I never keep any. I'll not be happy until I see
Gentleman Andy doing the lockstep."
He sat down on my clean collars, found my cigarettes and struck a
match on the mahogany bed post with one movement.
"Where's the Pirate?" he demanded. The Pirate is my housekeeper,
Mrs. Klopton, a very worthy woman, so labeled - and libeled - because
of a ferocious pair of eyes and what McKnight called a bucaneering
nose. I quietly closed the door into the hall.
"Keep your voice down, Richey," I said. "She is looking for the
evening paper to see if it is going to rain. She has my raincoat
and an umbrella waiting in the hall."
The collars being damaged beyond repair, he left them and went to
the window. He stood there for some time, staring at the blackness
that represented the wall of the house next door.
"It's raining now," he said over his shoulder, and closed the window
and the shutters. Something in his voice made me glance up, but he
was watching me, his hands idly in his pockets.
"Who lives next door?" he inquired in a perfunctory tone, after a
pause. I was packing my razor.
"House is empty," I returned absently. "If the landlord would put
it in some sort of shape - -"
"Did you put those notes in your pocket?" he broke in.
"Yes." I was impatient. "Along with my certificates of registration,
baptism and vaccination. Whoever wants them will have to steal my
coat to get them."
"Well, I would move them, if I were you. Somebody in the next house
was confoundedly anxious to see where you put them. Somebody right
at that window opposite."
I scoffed at the idea, but nevertheless I moved the papers, putting
them in my traveling-bag, well down at the bottom. McKnight watched
me uneasily.
"I have a hunch that you are going to have trouble," he said, as I
locked the alligator bag. "Darned if I like starting anything
important on Friday."
"You have a congenital dislike to start anything on any old day," I
retorted, still sore from my lost Saturday. "And if you knew the
owner of that house as I do you would know that if there was any one
at that window he is paying rent for the privilege."
Mrs. Klopton rapped at the door and spoke discreetly from the hall.
"Did Mr. McKnight bring the evening paper?" she inquired.
"Sorry, but I didn't, Mrs. Klopton," McKnight called. "The Cubs
won, three to nothing." He listened, grinning, as she moved away
with little irritated rustles of her black silk gown.
I finished my packing, changed my collar and was ready to go. Then
very cautiously we put out the light and opened the shutters. The
window across was merely a deeper black in the darkness. It was
closed and dirty. And yet, probably owing to Richey's suggestion,
I had an uneasy sensation of eyes staring across at me. The next
moment we were at the door, poised for flight.
"We'll have to run for it," I said in a whisper. "She's down there
with a package of some sort, sandwiches probably. And she's
threatened me with overshoes for a month. Ready now!"
I had a kaleidoscopic view of Mrs. Klopton in the lower hall,
holding out an armful of such traveling impedimenta as she deemed
essential, while beside her, Euphemia, the colored housemaid,
grinned over a white-wrapped box.
"Awfully sorry-no time-back Sunday," I panted over my shoulder.
Then the door closed and the car was moving away.
McKnight bent forward and stared at the facade of the empty house
next door as we passed. It was black, staring, mysterious, as empty
buildings are apt to be.
"I'd like to hold a post-mortem on that corpse of a house," he said
thoughtfully. "By George, I've a notion to get out and take a look."
"Somebody after the brass pipes," I scoffed. "House has been empty
for a year."
With one hand on the steering wheel McKnight held out the other for
my cigarette case. "Perhaps," he said; "but I don't see what she
would want with brass pipe."
"A woman!" I laughed outright. "You have been looking too hard at
the picture in the back of your watch, that's all. There's an
experiment like that: if you stare long enough - "
But McKnight was growing sulky: he sat looking rigidly ahead, and
he did not speak again until he brought the Cannonball to a stop
at the station. Even then it was only a perfunctory remark. He
went through the gate with me, and with five minutes to spare, we
lounged and smoked in the train shed. My mind had slid away from
my surroundings and had wandered to a polo pony that I couldn't
afford and intended to buy anyhow. Then McKnight shook off his
taciturnity.
"For heaven's sake, don't look so martyred," he burst out; "I know
you've done all the traveling this summer. I know you're missing a
game to-morrow. But don't be a patient mother; confound it, I have
to go to Richmond on Sunday. I - I want to see a girl."
"Oh, don't mind me," I observed politely. "Personally, I wouldn't
change places with you. What's her name - North? South?"
"West," he snapped. "Don't try to be funny. And all I have to say,
Blakeley, is that if you ever fall in love I hope you make an
egregious ass of yourself."
In view of what followed, this came rather close to prophecy.
The trip west was without incident. I played bridge with a
furniture dealer from Grand Rapids, a sales agent for a Pittsburg
iron firm and a young professor from an eastern college. I won
three rubbers out of four, finished what cigarettes McKnight had
left me, and went to bed at one o'clock. It was growing cooler,
and the rain had ceased. Once, toward morning, I wakened with a
start, for no apparent reason, and sat bolt upright. I had an
uneasy feeling that some one had been looking at me, the same
sensation I had experienced earlier in the evening at the window.
But I could feel the bag with the notes, between me and the
window, and with my arm thrown over it for security, I lapsed
again into slumber. Later, when I tried to piece together the
fragments of that journey, I remembered that my coat, which had
been folded and placed beyond my restless tossing, had been rescued
in the morning from a heterogeneous jumble of blankets, evening
papers and cravat, had been shaken out with profanity and donned
with wrath. At the time, nothing occurred to me but the necessity
of writing to the Pullman Company and asking them if they ever
traveled in their own cars. I even formulated some of the letter.
"If they are built to scale, why not take a man of ordinary stature
as your unit?" I wrote mentally. "I can not fold together like
the traveling cup with which I drink your abominable water."
I was more cheerful after I had had a cup of coffee in the Union
Station. It was too early to attend to business, and I lounged in
the restaurant and hid behind the morning papers. As I had expected,
they had got hold of my visit and its object. On the first page was
a staring announcement that the forged papers in the Bronson case
had been brought to Pittsburg. Underneath, a telegram from
Washington stated that Lawrence Blakeley, of Blakeley and McKnight,
had left for Pittsburg the night before, and that, owing to the
approaching trial of the Bronson case and the illness of John
Gilmore, the Pittsburg millionaire, who was the chief witness for
the prosecution, it was supposed that the visit was intimately
concerned with the trial.
I looked around apprehensively. There were no reporters yet in
sight, and thankful to have escaped notice I paid for my breakfast
and left. At the cab-stand I chose the least dilapidated hansom
I could find, and giving the driver the address of the Gilmore
residence, in the East end, I got in.
I was just in time. As the cab turned and rolled off, a slim young
man in a straw hat separated himself from a little group of men and
hurried toward us.
"Hey! Wait a minute there!" he called, breaking into a trot.
But the cabby did not hear, or perhaps did not care to. We jogged
comfortably along, to my relief, leaving the young man far behind.
I avoid reporters on principle, having learned long ago that I am
an easy mark for a clever interviewer.
It was perhaps nine o'clock when I left the station. Our way was
along the boulevard which hugged the side of one of the city's great
hills. Far below, to the left, lay the railroad tracks and the
seventy times seven looming stacks of the mills. The white mist of
the river, the grays and blacks of the smoke blended into a
half-revealing haze, dotted here and there with fire. It was
unlovely, tremendous. Whistler might have painted it with its
pathos, its majesty, but he would have missed what made it
infinitely suggestive - the rattle and roar of iron on iron, the
rumble of wheels, the throbbing beat, against the ears, of fire
and heat and brawn welding prosperity.
Something of this I voiced to the grim old millionaire who was
responsible for at least part of it. He was propped up in bed
in his East end home, listening to the market reports read by a
nurse, and he smiled a little at my enthusiasm.
"I can't see much beauty in it myself," he said. "But it's our
badge of prosperity. The full dinner pail here means a nose that
looks like a flue. Pittsburg without smoke wouldn't be Pittsburg,
any more than New York without prohibition would be New York.
Sit down for a few minutes, Mr. Blakeley. Now, Miss Gardner,
Westinghouse Electric."
The nurse resumed her reading in a monotonous voice. She read
literally and without understanding, using initials and
abbreviations as they came. But the shrewd old man followed her
easily. Once, however, he stopped her.
"D-o is ditto," he said gently, "not do."
As the nurse droned along, I found myself looking curiously at a
photograph in a silver frame on the bed-side table. It was the
picture of a girl in white, with her hands clasped loosely before
her. Against the dark background her figure stood out slim and
young. Perhaps it was the rather grim environment, possibly it was
my mood, but although as a general thing photographs of young girls
make no appeal to me, this one did. I found my eyes straying back
to it. By a little finesse I even made out the name written across
the corner, "Alison."
Mr. Gilmore lay back among his pillows and listened to the nurse's
listless voice. But he was watching me from under his heavy eyebrows,
for when the reading was over, and we were alone, he indicated the
picture with a gesture.
"I keep it there to remind myself that I am an old man," he said.
"That is my granddaughter, Alison West."
I expressed the customary polite surprise, at which, finding me
responsive, he told me his age with a chuckle of pride. More
surprise, this time genuine. From that we went to what he ate for
breakfast and did not eat for luncheon, and then to his reserve
power, which at sixty-five becomes a matter for thought. And so,
in a wide circle, back to where we started, the picture.
"Father was a rascal," John Gilmore said, picking up the frame.
"The happiest day of my life was when I knew he was safely dead in
bed and not hanged. If the child had looked like him, I - well, she
doesn't. She's a Gilmore, every inch. Supposed to look like me."
"Very noticeably," I agreed soberly.
I had produced the notes by that time, and replacing the picture Mr.
Gilmore gathered his spectacles from beside it. He went over the
four notes methodically, examining each carefully and putting it
down before he picked up the next. Then he leaned back and took off
his glasses.
"They're not so bad," he said thoughtfully. "Not so bad. But I
never saw them before. That's my unofficial signature. I am
inclined to think - " he was speaking partly to himself - "to think
that he has got hold of a letter of mine, probably to Alison.
Bronson was a friend of her rapscallion of a father."
I took Mr. Gilmore's deposition and put it into my traveling-bag
with the forged notes. When I saw them again, almost three weeks
later, they were unrecognizable, a mass of charred paper on a copper
ashtray. In the interval other and bigger things had happened: the
Bronson forgery case had shrunk beside the greater and more imminent
mystery of the man in lower ten. And Alison West had come into the
story and into my life.
CHAPTER II
A TORN TELEGRAM
I lunched alone at the Gilmore house, and went back to the city at
once. The sun had lifted the mists, and a fresh summer wind had
cleared away the smoke pall. The boulevard was full of cars flying
countryward for the Saturday half-holiday, toward golf and tennis,
green fields and babbling girls. I gritted my teeth and thought of
McKnight at Richmond, visiting the lady with the geographical name.
And then, for the first time, I associated John Gilmore's granddaughter
with the "West" that McKnight had irritably flung at me.
I still carried my traveling-bag, for McKnight's vision at the window
of the empty house had not been without effect. I did not transfer
the notes to my pocket, and, if I had, it would not have altered the
situation later. Only the other day McKnight put this very thing up
to me.
"I warned you," he reminded me. "I told you there were queer things
coming, and to be on your guard. You ought to have taken your
revolver."
"It would have been of exactly as much use as a bucket of snow in
Africa," I retorted. "If I had never closed my eyes, or if I had
kept my finger on the trigger of a six-shooter (which is novelesque
for revolver), the result would have been the same. And the next
time you want a little excitement with every variety of thrill
thrown in, I can put you by way of it. You begin by getting the
wrong berth in a Pullman car, and end - "
"Oh, I know how it ends," he finished shortly. "Don't you suppose
the whole thing's written on my spinal marrow?"
But I am wandering again. That is the difficulty with the
unprofessional story-teller: he yaws back and forth and can't keep
in the wind; he drops his characters overboard when he hasn't any
further use for them and drowns them; he forgets the coffee-pot and
the frying-pan and all the other small essentials, and, if he carries
a love affair, he mutters a fervent "Allah be praised" when he lands
them, drenched with adventures, at the matrimonial dock at the end
of the final chapter.
I put in a thoroughly unsatisfactory afternoon. Time dragged
eternally. I dropped in at a summer vaudeville, and bought some
ties at a haberdasher's. I was bored but unexpectant; I had no
premonition of what was to come. Nothing unusual had ever happened
to me; friends of mine had sometimes sailed the high seas of
adventure or skirted the coasts of chance, but all of the shipwrecks
had occurred after a woman passenger had been taken on. "Ergo," I
had always said "no women!" I repeated it to myself that evening
almost savagely, when I found my thoughts straying back to the
picture of John Gilmore's granddaughter. I even argued as I ate my
solitary dinner at a downtown restaurant.
"Haven't you troubles enough," I reflected, "without looking for
more? Hasn't Bad News gone lame, with a matinee race booked for
next week? Otherwise aren't you comfortable? Isn't your house in
order? Do you want to sell a pony in order to have the library
done over in mission or the drawing-room in gold? Do you want
somebody to count the empty cigarette boxes lying around every
morning?"
Lay it to the long idle afternoon, to the new environment, to
anything you like, but I began to think that perhaps I did. I
was confoundedly lonely. For the first time in my life its even
course began to waver: the needle registered warning marks on the
matrimonial seismograph, lines vague enough, but lines.
My alligator bag lay at my feet, still locked. While I waited for
my coffee I leaned back and surveyed the people incuriously. There
were the usual couples intent on each other: my new state of mind
made me regard them with tolerance. But at the next table, where
a man and woman dined together, a different atmosphere prevailed.
My attention was first caught by the woman's face. She had been
speaking earnestly across the table, her profile turned to me. I
had noticed casually her earnest manner, her somber clothes, and the
great mass of odd, bronze-colored hair on her neck. But suddenly
she glanced toward me and the utter hopelessness - almost tragedy
- of her expression struck me with a shock. She half closed her
eyes and drew a long breath, then she turned again to the man across
the table.
Neither one was eating. He sat low in his chair, his chin on his
chest, ugly folds of thick flesh protruding over his collar. He
was probably fifty, bald, grotesque, sullen, and yet not without
a suggestion of power. But he had been drinking; as I looked, he
raised an unsteady hand and summoned a waiter with a wine list.
The young woman bent across the table and spoke again quickly. She
had unconsciously raised her voice. Not beautiful, in her
earnestness and stress she rather interested me. I had an idle
inclination to advise the waiter to remove the bottled temptation
from the table. I wonder what would have happened if I had? Suppose
Harrington had not been intoxicated when he entered the Pullman car
Ontario that night!
For they were about to make a journey, I gathered, and the young
woman wished to go alone. I drank three cups of coffee, which
accounted for my wakefulness later, and shamelessly watched the
tableau before me. The woman's protest evidently went for nothing:
across the table the man grunted monosyllabic replies and grew more
and more lowering and sullen. Once, during a brief unexpected
pianissimo in the music, her voice came to me sharply:
"If I could only see him in time!" she was saying. "Oh, it's
terrible!"
In spite of my interest I would have forgotten the whole incident
at once, erased it from my mind as one does the inessentials and
clutterings of memory, had I not met them again, later that evening,
in the Pennsylvania station. The situation between them had not
visibly altered: the same dogged determination showed in the man's
face, but the young woman - daughter or wife? I wondered - had
drawn down her veil and I could only suspect what white misery lay
beneath.
I bought my berth after waiting in a line of some eight or ten
people. When, step by step, I had almost reached the window, a
tall woman whom I had not noticed before spoke to me from my elbow.
She had a ticket and money in her hand.
"Will you try to get me a lower when you buy yours?" she asked. "I
have traveled for three nights in uppers."
I consented, of course; beyond that I hardly noticed the woman. I
had a vague impression of height and a certain amount of stateliness,
but the crowd was pushing behind me, and some one was standing on
my foot. I got two lowers easily, and, turning with the change and
berths, held out the tickets.
"Which will you have?" I asked. "Lower eleven or lower ten?"
"It makes no difference," she said. "Thank you very much indeed."
At random I gave her lower eleven, and called a porter to help her
with her luggage. I followed them leisurely to the train shed, and
ten minutes more saw us under way.
I looked into my car, but it presented the peculiarly unattractive
appearance common to sleepers. The berths were made up; the center
aisle was a path between walls of dingy, breeze-repelling curtains,
while the two seats at each end of the car were piled high with
suitcases and umbrellas. The perspiring porter was trying to be six
places at once: somebody has said that Pullman porters are black so
they won't show the dirt, but they certainly show the heat.
Nine-fifteen was an outrageous hour to go to bed, especially since
I sleep little or not at all on the train, so I made my way to the
smoker and passed the time until nearly eleven with cigarettes and
a magazine. The car was very close. It was a warm night, and
before turning in I stood a short time in the vestibule. The train
had been stopping at frequent intervals, and, finding the brakeman
there, I asked the trouble.
It seemed that there was a hot-box on the next car, and that not
only were we late, but we were delaying the second section, just
behind. I was beginning to feel pleasantly drowsy, and the air was
growing cooler as we got into the mountains. I said good night to
the brakeman and went back to my berth. To my surprise, lower ten
was already occupied - a suit-case projected from beneath, a pair
of shoes stood on the floor, and from behind the curtains came the
heavy, unmistakable breathing of deep sleep. I hunted out the
porter and together we investigated.
"Are you asleep, sir?" asked the porter, leaning over deferentially.
No answer forthcoming, he opened the curtains and looked in. Yes,
the intruder was asleep - very much asleep - and an overwhelming
odor of whisky proclaimed that he would probably remain asleep
until morning. I was irritated. The car was full, and I was not
disposed to take an upper in order to allow this drunken interloper
to sleep comfortably in my berth.
"You'll have to get out of this," I said, shaking him angrily. But
he merely grunted and turned over. As he did so, I saw his features
for the first time. It was the quarrelsome man of the restaurant.
I was less disposed than ever to relinquish my claim, but the porter,
after a little quiet investigation, offered a solution of the
difficulty. "There's no one in lower nine," he suggested, pulling
open the curtains just across. "It's likely nine's his berth, and
he's made a mistake, owing to his condition. You'd better take nine,
sir."
I did, with a firm resolution that if nine's rightful owner turned
up later I should be just as unwakable as the man opposite. I
undressed leisurely, making sure of the safety of the forged notes,
and placing my grip as before between myself and the window.
Being a man of systematic habits, I arranged my clothes carefully,
putting my shoes out for the porter to polish, and stowing my collar
and scarf in the little hammock swung for the purpose.
At last, with my pillows so arranged that I could see out comfortably,
and with the unhygienic-looking blanket turned back - I have always
a distrust of those much-used affairs - I prepared to wait gradually
for sleep.
But sleep did not visit me. The train came to frequent, grating
stops, and I surmised the hot box again. I am not a nervous man,
but there was something chilling in the thought of the second section
pounding along behind us. Once, as I was dozing, our locomotive
whistled a shrill warning - "You keep back where you belong," it
screamed to my drowsy ears, and from somewhere behind came a
chastened "All-right-I-will."
I grew more and more wide-awake. At Cresson I got up on my elbow
and blinked out at the station lights. Some passengers boarded the
train there and I heard a woman's low tones, a southern voice, rich
and full. Then quiet again. Every nerve was tense: time passed,
perhaps ten minutes, possibly half an hour. Then, without the
slightest warning, as the train rounded a curve, a heavy body was
thrown into my berth. The incident, trivial as it seemed, was
startling in its suddenness, for although my ears were painfully
strained and awake, I had heard no step outside. The next instant
the curtain hung limp again; still without a sound, my disturber
had slipped away into the gloom and darkness. In a frenzy of
wakefulness, I sat up, drew on a pair of slippers and fumbled for
my bath-robe.
From a berth across, probably lower ten, came that particular
aggravating snore which begins lightly, delicately, faintly soprano,
goes down the scale a note with every breath, and, after keeping the
listener tense with expectation, ends with an explosion that tears
the very air. I was more and more irritable: I sat on the edge
of the berth and hoped the snorer would choke to death. He had
considerable vitality, however; he withstood one shock after another
and survived to start again with new vigor. In desperation I found
some cigarettes and one match, piled my blankets over my grip, and
drawing the curtains together as though the berth were still occupied,
I made my way to the vestibule of the car.
I was not clad for dress parade. Is it because the male is so
restricted to gloom in his every-day attire that he blossoms into
gaudy colors in his pajamas and dressing-gowns? It would take a Turk
to feel at home before an audience in my red and yellow bathrobe, a
Christmas remembrance from Mrs. Klopton, with slippers to match.
So, naturally, when I saw a feminine figure on the platform, my
first instinct was to dodge. The woman, however, was quicker than
I; she gave me a startled glance, wheeled and disappeared, with a
flash of two bronze-colored braids, into the next car.
Cigarette box in one hand, match in the other, I leaned against the
uncertain frame of the door and gazed after her vanished figure.
The mountain air flapped my bath-robe around my bare ankles, my one
match burned to the end and went out, and still I stared. For I
had seen on her expressive face a haunting look that was horror,
nothing less. Heaven knows, I am not psychological. Emotions have
to be written large before I can read them. But a woman in trouble
always appeals to me, and this woman was more than that. She was
in deadly fear.
If I had not been afraid of being ridiculous, I would have followed
her. But I fancied that the apparition of a man in a red and yellow
bath-robe, with an unkempt thatch of hair, walking up to her and
assuring her that he would protect her would probably put her into
hysterics. I had done that once before, when burglars had tried to
break into the house, and had startled the parlor maid into bed for
a week. So I tried to assure myself that I had imagined the lady's
distress - or caused it, perhaps - and to dismiss her from my mind.
Perhaps she was merely anxious about the unpleasant gentleman of the
restaurant. I thought smugly that I could have told her all about
him: that he was sleeping the sleep of the just and the intoxicated
in a berth that ought, by all that was fair and right, to have been
mine, and that if I were tied to a man who snored like that I should
have him anesthetized and his soft palate put where it would never
again flap like a loose sail in the wind.
We passed Harrisburg as I stood there. It was starlight, and the
great crests of the Alleghanies had given way to low hills. At
intervals we passed smudges of gray white, no doubt in daytime
comfortable farms, which McKnight says is a good way of putting it,
the farms being a lot more comfortable than the people on them.
I was growing drowsy: the woman with the bronze hair and the
horrified face was fading in retrospect. It was colder, too, and
I turned with a shiver to go in. As I did so a bit of paper
fluttered into the air and settled on my sleeve, like a butterfly
on a gorgeous red and yellow blossom. I picked it up curiously
and glanced at it. It was part of a telegram that had been torn
into bits.
There were only parts of four words on the scrap, but it left me
puzzled and thoughtful. It read, "-ower ten, car seve-."
"Lower ten, car seven," was my berth-the one I had bought and found
preempted.
CHAPTER III
ACROSS THE AISLE
No solution offering itself, I went back to my berth. The snorer
across had apparently strangled, or turned over, and so after a
time I dropped asleep, to be awakened by the morning sunlight across
my face.
I felt for my watch, yawning prodigiously. I reached under the
pillow and failed to find it, but something scratched the back of
my hand. I sat up irritably and nursed the wound, which was bleeding
a little. Still drowsy, I felt more cautiously for what I supposed
had been my scarf pin, but there was nothing there. Wide awake now,
I reached for my traveling-bag, on the chance that I had put my watch
in there. I had drawn the satchel to me and had my hand on the lock
before I realized that it was not my own!
Mine was of alligator hide. I had killed the beast in Florida, after
the expenditure of enough money to have bought a house and enough
energy to have built one. The bag I held in my hand was a black one,
sealskin, I think. The staggering thought of what the loss of my bag
meant to me put my finger on the bell and kept it there until the
porter came.
"Did you ring, sir?" he asked, poking his head through the curtains
obsequiously. McKnight objects that nobody can poke his head through
a curtain and be obsequious. But Pullman porters can and do.
"No," I snapped. "It rang itself. What in thunder do you mean by
exchanging my valise for this one? You'll have to find it if you
waken the entire car to do it. There are important papers in that
grip."
"Porter," called a feminine voice from an upper berth near-by.
"Porter, am I to dangle here all day?"
"Let her dangle," I said savagely. "You find that bag of mine."
The porter frowned. Then he looked at me with injured dignity.
"I brought in your overcoat, sir. You carried your own valise."
The fellow was right! In an excess of caution I had refused to
relinquish my alligator bag, and had turned over my other traps
to the porter. It was clear enough then. I was simply a victim
of the usual sleeping-car robbery. I was in a lather of
perspiration by that time: the lady down the car was still
dangling and talking about it: still nearer a feminine voice was
giving quick orders in French, presumably to a maid. The porter
was on his knees, looking under the berth.
"Not there, sir," he said, dusting his knees. He was visibly more
cheerful, having been absolved of responsibility. "Reckon it was
taken while you was wanderin' around the car last night."
"I'll give you fifty dollars if you find it," I said. "A hundred.
Reach up my shoes and I'll - "
I stopped abruptly. My eyes were fixed in stupefied amazement on
a coat that hung from a hook at the foot of my berth. From the
coat they traveled, dazed, to the soft-bosomed shirt beside it, and
from there to the collar and cravat in the net hammock across the
windows.
"A hundred!" the porter repeated, showing his teeth. But I caught
him by the arm and pointed to the foot of the berth.
"What - what color's that coat?" I asked unsteadily.
"Gray, sir." His tone was one of gentle reproof.
"And - the trousers?"
He reached over and held up one creased leg. "Gray, too," he
grinned.
"Gray!" I could not believe even his corroboration of my own eyes.
"But my clothes were blue!" The porter was amused: he dived under
the curtains and brought up a pair of shoes. "Your shoes, sir," he
said with a flourish. "Reckon you've been dreaming, sir."
Now, there are two things I always avoid in my dress - possibly an
idiosyncrasy of my bachelor existence. These tabooed articles are
red neckties and tan shoes. And not only were the shoes the porter
lifted from the floor of a gorgeous shade of yellow, but the scarf
which was run through the turned over collar was a gaudy red. It
took a full minute for the real import of things to penetrate my
dazed intelligence. Then I gave a vindictive kick at the offending
ensemble.
"They're not mine, any of them," I snarled. "They are some other
fellow's. I'll sit here until I take root before I put them on."
"They're nice lookin' clothes," the porter put in, eying the red
tie with appreciation. "Ain't everybody would have left you
anything."
"Call the conductor," I said shortly. Then a possible explanation
occurred to me. "Oh, porter - what's the number of this berth?"
"Seven, sir. If you cain't wear those shoes - "
"Seven!" In my relief I almost shouted it. "Why, then, it's
simple enough. I'm in the wrong berth, that's all. My berth is
nine. Only - where the deuce is the man who belongs here?"
"Likely in nine, sir." The darky was enjoying himself. "You and
the other gentleman just got mixed in the night. That's all, sir."
It was clear that he thought I had been drinking.
I drew a long breath. Of course, that was the explanation. This
was number seven's berth, that was his soft hat, this his umbrella,
his coat, his bag. My rage turned to irritation at myself.
The porter went to the next berth and I could hear his softly
insinuating voice. "Time to get up, sir. Are you awake? Time
to get up."
There was no response from number nine. I guessed that he had
opened the curtains and was looking in. Then he came back.
"Number nine's empty," he said.
"Empty! Do you mean my clothes aren't there?" I demanded. "My
valise? Why don't you answer me?"
"You doan' give me time," he retorted. "There ain't nothin' there.
But it's been slept in."
The disappointment was the greater for my few moments of hope. I
sat up in a white fury and put on the clothes that had been left me.
Then, still raging, I sat on the edge of the berth and put on the
obnoxious tan shoes. The porter, called to his duties, made little
excursions back to me, to offer assistance and to chuckle at my
discomfiture. He stood by, outwardly decorous, but with little
irritating grins of amusement around his mouth, when I finally
emerged with the red tie in my hand.
"Bet the owner of those clothes didn't become them any more than
you do," he said, as he plied the ubiquitous whisk broom.
"When I get the owner of these clothes," I retorted grimly, "he
will need a shroud. Where's the conductor?"
The conductor was coming, he assured me; also that there was no bag
answering the description of mine on the car. I slammed my way to
the dressing-room, washed, choked my fifteen and a half neck into a
fifteen collar, and was back again in less than five minutes. The
car, as well as its occupants, was gradually taking on a daylight
appearance. I hobbled in, for one of the shoes was abominably tight,
and found myself facing a young woman in blue with an unforgettable
face. ("Three women already." McKnight says: "That's going some,
even if you don't count the Gilmore nurse.") She stood, half-turned
toward me, one hand idly drooping, the other steadying her as she
gazed out at the flying landscape. I had an instant impression that
I had met her somewhere, under different circumstances, more cheerful
ones, I thought, for the girl's dejection now was evident. Beside
her, sitting down, a small dark woman, considerably older, was
talking in a rapid undertone. The girl nodded indifferently now and
then. I fancied, although I was not sure, that my appearance brought
a startled look into the young woman's face. I sat down and, hands
thrust deep into the other man's pockets, stared ruefully at the
other man's shoes.
The stage was set. In a moment the curtain was going up on the
first act of the play. And for a while we would all say our little
speeches and sing our little songs, and I, the villain, would hold