Two Flights Up (9 page)

“Maybe he speculated,” she said, with a glance at the swinging doors and the group beyond them. “Everybody’s doing it.”

He had not left the office more than five minutes when they came after him.

“How should I know where he’s gone?” Miss Sharp said, eying the detective shrewdly. She hardly needed the sight of the badge to “put her wise,” she said later.

“But you’re expecting him back this morning?”

“Depends on how far he’s gone,” she told him. “What’s he been doing? Bootlegging, or dodging his income tax?”

“Wait until he comes back and you’ll find out.”

She was curious but unanxious.

But as luck would have it, Warrington did not go back. He went around to see a certain young man, the only attorney he knew in the city, for he needed advice, and he trusted Meyer’s discretion. Meyer, however, was arguing a case at the Courthouse, and after waiting an hour for him, he gave up and went away.

Save for a sense of inner urgency, there seemed to be no immediate danger. He decided to think the matter over, and having a prospective customer out of town, he took an inter-urban car and proceeded half-heartedly to the day’s work.

It is rather interesting to note that had he taken a train instead, he would have been under arrest before he knew it. As things were, however, he sat safely enough in the street car, a big, heavy-shouldered young man, much like any other big and heavy-shouldered young man, save perhaps for a slightly dogged look about his mouth and chin and a certain grave directness in his eyes. And after a while he resolutely put the Baynes, including Holly, out of his mind and concentrated on the business before him.

He sold five bonds, which netted him the munificent sum of ten dollars. But before he did it, he had to lunch with the buyer and stop in to see his family.

“Do you good,” said the customer. “You fellows who sell bonds ought to see what it’s all about. I buy bonds to protect my family. So does everybody else. If I wanted to make money, I’d buy stocks.”

Not important, all this, save that it made him very late getting back to the city, and that it sent him back rather thoughtful. Whether a fellow sold bonds or bought them, he ought to be working for somebody besides himself.

He drew a long breath, as he sat in the car, and then stirred impatiently. He could see Holly as she had been that morning in the lower hall, thin and wretched; and he could see Margaret Cox, at the end of her rope too, lying down on the kitchen floor to end everything in one last desperate gesture.

But Margaret hadn’t. She had had the courage to pull out and to take happiness where she found it. He did not for a moment believe that Holly would.

Once in the city again, however, his mind returned to the suitcase. He looked at his watch. The banks were closed now, and the office soon would be. Hardly worth while going back. Perhaps he’d better go home and tell Holly what he had done—or rather had not done. He got out and walked across town, and a stray dog from somewhere picked him up and followed along.

It was a wretched creature, emaciated and despondent, but when he stopped and tried to turn it back, it looked up at him with eyes at once so hopeful and so hungry that he finally gave up the attempt. He stopped at a dairy and bought a bottle of milk, as the best way to break its long fast, and with this in a newspaper under his arm, and the dog at his heels, reached the end of Kelsey Street.

Later on, he was to thank this impulse for a few hours’ respite—that and his pride, perhaps. For from a block away he saw Brooks’s car in front of the house, and was not minded to pass the drawing-room door, and that gentleman inside it, with his present
entourage
.

He was irritated as he turned to the right along a side street, and so along an alleyway to the gate leading into the yard of the house, irritated and depressed.

“I’ll get out,” he told himself. “That’s what I’ll do. Get out from under. It’s only by chance I’m here anyhow. What the devil would they have done if I hadn’t turned up?”

He slammed the gate so violently that he set the dog to shivering, and ashamed of that, he bent down and stroked its head. He felt better after that, and more gentle, as almost all do who have touched in friendliness a friendless dog. The kitchen door was unlocked, and he got a pan there and took it outside.

“Here, old boy,” he said, and poured out the milk.

When this Barmecide feast was over and the animal swollen to the bursting point, he put it out into the alley. But it whimpered there and scratched at the gate, and at last he let it in again. He found an old piece of carpet and placed it in a sheltered spot under the back steps, and then, and only then, he went into the house.

As he opened the door to the hall, he saw Mrs. Bayne in the front hall with her back to him. She had drawn aside the curtain of the front door and was peering anxiously out, and as she peered, she talked to someone in the drawing room.

“I really don’t understand it, Furness. She hardly ever goes out. And she knew I was not well. She will certainly be back soon.”

“Don’t worry about it. I can look over the paper.”

But she had no intention of letting him look over the paper, apparently. As Warrington went quietly up the stairs, he could still hear her plaintive, rather exasperated voice.

“What I don’t understand,” she was saying, “is her not letting me know. I wakened up and she was gone. Just a note to say she would be back shortly. It’s so unlike her.”

Warrington himself was somewhat puzzled but hardly anxious. He washed, and changed his collar as usual, and once he heard the front door close and went to the window to see if Brooks had gone. But his car was still outside, and across the street a stout light-stepping gentleman had just stopped to light a cigarette.

Sometime, at some place, he had seen that same picture before. He pondered over it, gazing down thoughtfully into the street. The swift early twilight was already falling, and as he looked, the city’s nightly miracle was accomplished and the lights came on.

But for him there was no miracle. He was thinking and watching.

The man had gone on. Warrington reached behind him, and turned off his light-switch, and then took up his vigil once more. He was rewarded within five minutes by seeing the individual again. This time, however, he did not pass on. He presumed on the growing darkness and a dark space before the McCook house to take up a position there.

M
ARGARET HAD NOT BEEN
in the Bayne house since her marriage.

“It’s like this,” James had said. “If I’m not good enough for them, my wife isn’t either. Let them come to you; I don’t object so long as I’m not here. But you don’t need them any more. The shoe’s on the other foot, my girl. Let them have their pride; I’ve got mine too.”

She had acquiesced. She loved Holly, but Annie Bayne had never more than tolerated her, and the house itself held only bitter memories.

And now, when in answer to the furious ringing of the bell Holly opened the door, Margaret was there. A strange Margaret, a wild-eyed, disheveled Margaret, her nose red with weeping, her gloves a crumpled ball in her hand. Since when had Margaret forgotten that no lady appears on the street ungloved?

Holly stood staring at her, and Margaret brushed past and into the hall with a sort of savage violence.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She’s asleep. She’s not well.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Margaret sharply. “She’s hiding. Anyhow, I’m going up.”

“No, you’re not,” said Holly. “You’re not going up like that. I’m not going to have her startled.”

Suddenly Margaret collapsed. She dropped on one of the hall chairs and burst into quiet but unrestrained weeping. She sat there, her face turned up and screwed into the hideous contortions of grief. She did not even feel for her handkerchief; there was something shameless in her abandon, like the bared shoulders and backs Holly used to see on the staircase. It should have been discreetly covered.

Holly, sadly puzzled, watched her and then put an arm around her.

“Tell me,” she said. “Come into the drawing room and tell me.”

Margaret got up, but she did not wipe her eyes. Tears fell to her worn black furs and hung there like beads; her bag had fallen open as it hung from her arm, and out of it protruded a damp handkerchief with a gay pink border. Holly drew it out and thrust it into her hand, but she did not use it.

“Now,” she said, after closing the door into the Hall. “What has happened? Is it Mr. Cox?”

The name brought Margaret to herself like an electric shock. She stopped crying and stared with red-rimmed hostile eyes at Holly.

“You know perfectly well what it is. You must know.”

“But I don’t. He isn’t hurt or sick, is he?”

“Then your mother knows! It was like her, just when we were so happy, and no thanks to her for that, either. When did she ever think of anybody but herself? And to help that man, after the way he’s ruined her life!”

“What man?”

“Your father. Get away from that door, Holly. I don’t care whether she’s asleep or not. I’m not, and I’m going up.”

“I’ll let you up, of course, but tell me first. You haven’t told me a thing.”

Margaret gazed at her bitterly.

“Oh, I’ll tell you, all right,” she said. “My James—my honest James, who never had a wrong thought in his life—has been arrested for receiving stolen goods.”

Holly felt a vague sense of relief. Somehow, nothing but murder or sudden death had seemed to justify Margaret’s woe. She drew a long breath.

“But of course it’s a mistake,” she said gently. “He’s been at the store too long for them to believe he’d do anything wrong now.”

Suddenly Margaret laughed, a hysterical high-pitched laugh that ended in a wail.

“At the store!” she said. “At his own home. In that suitcase your mother sent down.”

“Oh, no,” said Holly. “Oh,
no!”

“Oh, yes,” sneered Margaret. “She was using me, as she’s always used me. I dare say your father was to call and get it and then abscond for Europe or some place. She’d do anything to get rid of him, even to—killing my husband. And it will kill him. If you could see him, sitting in the District Attorney’s office, with his poor head bowed, and not even knowing what it’s all about! And when I told them, they didn’t believe me!”

She gave a vicious jerk at her hat and moved toward the door.

“Sick or well,” she said, “she’s going to get out of bed and go down there. Let them jail
her
.”

“Let them jail me,” said Holly quietly. “You see, I sent the suitcase, Aunt Margaret. She doesn’t know anything about it.”

Margaret stopped, her hand on the knob.

“You?”

Next to James, she loved Holly. Together they had run the house and counted the pennies. It was to her, not to her mother, that the girl had gone with the small worries, the little snubs, the constant struggle between gentility and poverty which had made up their lives. She came back into the room.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because she had found it. She’d already sold one bond; I was afraid she would sell some more.”

The full import of the thing dawned on Margaret slowly.

“
She sold a bond
,” she repeated slowly. “Then—to clear James we would have to implicate her. Oh, my God, Holly! What are we going to do?”

A
T SIX O’CLOCK HOLLY
came home. She dragged herself up the steps and stood there to compose herself, but Mrs. Bayne’s sharp ears had heard her, and she flung the door wide.

“Well, I must say!” she said with asperity. “Didn’t you know Furness was coming?”

“I couldn’t make it any sooner.”

“But where on earth have you been?”

“With Aunt Margaret.”

She took off her hat, and in the glare of the hall chandelier she looked fairly extinguished, her eyes dull and her face colourless. The smile she managed to summon made her look appealingly childish; and Furness, coming into the hall, took advantage of her lack of resistance to put an arm around her.

“You come in here and sit down,” he said authoritatively. “That’s the girl. Now put your head back, and I’ll get some tea.”

Mrs. Bayne left them there and went up the stairs, tight-lipped and still considerably shaken. Strange thoughts had been running through her mind during that vigil at the front door, strange and terrifying thoughts. But that was all over now. Holly had been upset by the telegram and had gone to Margaret. She had always gone to Margaret when in trouble.

All over—unless Holly had got some nonsense into her head about marrying Furness. He had seemed all right. But he had not kissed her when she came in. Did that mean—

She walked the floor; her life seemed to be one anxiety after another.

In the drawing room Furness made no advances to Holly. He saw that she was in no mood for them. And she understood and liked him for it; as he moved about, expertly preparing the tea, she was perhaps fonder of him than she had ever been before. He didn’t talk. If what she took for kindness was really tact, it made no difference; for after all, behind most tactfulness is consideration.

When he gave her the cup his fingers touched hers, and he reached down and took her other hand, judicially.

“You’re cold,” he said, and going out into the hall returned with his overcoat and tucked it about her. “Don’t talk yet,” he told her.

He rather fancied himself in this new and masterful role; it gave him a sense of power, of masculine dominance, and out of this gratification came a new magnanimity. He saw himself, chivalrous and strong, bringing peace and succour to this unhappy family, and the fact that he was to be well paid for it did not decrease his complacence.

It was not until her colour had come back that he made any approach to her whatever, and then it was an indirect one.

“Now, see here,” he said, in what he would have been startled to know was James Cox’s best authoritative manner, “you have got some bee in the little bonnet, and it’s nonsense. Do you hear that?”

She nodded dumbly.

“I know what it is, and it isn’t going to make any difference. We may have to change some things, but not—not the essential. As far as that goes”—like many fine gestures, this one was getting to be a bit more comprehensive than he had intended it to be—“I’m willing to let things stand as they are, church and all, if you want to.”