The Destroying Angel Part 14

"You were calling her your mascot two hours ago."

"She'll be the death of me, yet," the little man insisted gloomily. He stopped short, jerking his arm free. "Look here, I'm not going. What's the use? We'd only row. And I've got my work cut out for me back there"--with a jerk of his head toward the theatre.

Whitaker hesitated, then without regret decided to lose him. It would be as well to get over the impending interview without a third factor.

"Very well," he said, beckoning a taxicab in to the curb. "What's the address?"

Max gave it sullenly.

"So long," he added morosely as Whitaker opened the cab door; "sorry I ever laid eyes on you."

Whitaker hesitated. "How about that supper?" he inquired. "Is it still on?"

"How in blazes do I know? Come round to the Beaux Arts and find out for yourself--same's I'll have to."

"All right," said Whitaker doubtfully. He nodded to the chauffeur, and jumped into the cab. As they swung away he received a parting impression of Max, his pose modelled on the popular conception of Napoleon at Waterloo: hands clasped behind his back, hair in disorder, chin on his chest, a puzzled frown shadowing his face as he stared sombrely after his departing guest.

Whitaker settled back and, oblivious to the lights of Broadway streaming past, tried to think--tried with indifferent success to prepare himself against the unhappy conference he had to antic.i.p.ate. It suddenly presented itself to his reason, with shocking force, that his att.i.tude must be humbly and wholly apologetic. It was a singular case: he had come home to find his wife on the point of marrying another man--and _she_ was the one ent.i.tled to feel aggrieved! Strange twist of the eternal triangle!...

He tried desperately, and with equal futility, to frame some excuse for his fault.

Far too soon the machine swerved into Fifty-seventh Street, slipped halfway down the block, described a wide arc to the northern curb and pulled up, trembling, before a modest modern residence between Sixth and Seventh avenues.

Reluctantly Whitaker got out and, on suspicion, told the chauffeur to wait. Then, with all the alacrity of a condemned man ascending the scaffold, he ran up the steps to the front door.

A man-servant answered his ring without undue delay.

Was Miss Law at home? He would see.

This indicated that she was at home. Whitaker tendered a card with his surname pencilled after that of _Mr. Hugh Morten_ in engraved script. He was suffered to enter and wait in the hallway.

He stared round him with pardonable wonder. If this were truly the home of Mary Ladislas Whitaker--her property--he had builded far better than he could possibly have foreseen with that investment of five hundred dollars six years since. But who, remembering the tortured, half-starved child of the Commercial House, could have prefigured the Sara Law of to-day--the woman who, before his eyes, within that hour, had burst through the counterfeit of herself of yesterday like some splendid creature emerging from its chrysalis?

Soft, shaded lights, rare furnis.h.i.+ngs, the rich yet delicate atmosphere of exquisite taste, the hush and orderly perfection of a home made and maintained with consummate art: these furnished him with dim, provoking intimations of an individuality to which he was a stranger--less than a stranger--nothing....

The man-servant brought his dignity down-stairs again.

Would Mr. Whitaker be pleased to wait in the drawing-room?

Mr. Whitaker surrendered top-coat and hat and was shown into the designated apartment. Almost immediately he became aware of feminine footsteps on the staircase--tapping heels, the faint murmuring of skirts. He faced the doorway, indefinably thrilled, the blood quickening in throat and temples.

To his intense disappointment there entered to him a woman impossible to confuse with her whom he sought: a lady well past middle-age, with the dignity and poise consistent with her years, her manifest breeding and her iron-gray hair.

"Mr. Whitaker?"

He bowed, conscious that he was being narrowly scrutinized, nicely weighed in the scales of a judgment prejudiced, if at all, not in his favor.

"I am Mrs. Secretan, a friend of Miss Law's. She has asked me to say that she begs to be excused, at least for to-night. She has suffered a severe shock and is able to see n.o.body."

"I understand--and I'm sorry," said Whitaker, swallowing his chagrin.

"And I am further instructed to ask if you will be good enough to leave your address."

"Certainly: I'm stopping at the Ritz-Carlton; but"--he demurred--"I should like to leave a note, if I may--?"

Mrs. Secretan nodded an a.s.sent. "You will find materials in the desk there," she added, indicating an escritoire.

Thanking her, Whitaker sat down, and, after some hesitation, wrote a few lines:

"Please don't think I mean to cause you the slightest inconvenience or distress. I shall be glad to further your wishes in any way you may care to designate. Please believe in my sincere regret...."

Signing and folding this, he rose and delivered it to Mrs. Secretan.

"Thank you," he said with a ceremonious bow.

The customary civilities were scrupulously observed.

He found himself in the street, with his trouble for all reward for his pains. He wondered what to do, where to go, next. There was in his mind a nagging thought that he ought to do something or other, somehow or other, to find Drummond and make him understand that he, Whitaker, had no desire or inclination to stand in his light; only, let the thing be consummated decently, as privately as possible, with due deference to the law....

The driver of the taxicab was holding the door for him, head bent to catch the address of the next stop. But his fare lingered still in doubt.

Dimly he became aware of the violent bawlings of a brace of news-vendors who were ramping through the street, one on either sidewalk. Beyond two words which seemed to be intended for "extra" and "tragedy" their cries were as inarticulate as they were deafening.

At the spur of a vague impulse, bred of an incredulous wonder if the papers were already noising abroad the news of the fiasco at the Theatre Max, Whitaker stopped one of the men and purchased a paper. It was delivered into his hands roughly folded so that a section of the front page which blazed with crimson ink was uppermost--and indicated, moreover, by a ridiculously dirty thumb.

"Ther'y'are, sir. 'Orrible moider.... Thanky...."

The man galloped on, howling. But Whitaker stood with his gaze riveted in horror. The news item so pointedly offered to his attention was clearly legible in the light of the cab lamps.

LATEST EXTRA

TRAGIC SUICIDE IN HARLEM RIVER

Stopping his automobile in the middle of Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge at 7.30 P.M., Carter S. Drummond, the lawyer and fiance of Sara Law the actress, threw himself to his death in the Harlem River. The body has not as yet been recovered.

VIII

A HISTORY

Whitaker returned at once to the Theatre Max, but only to find the front of the house dark, Forty-sixth Street gradually rea.s.suming its normal nocturnal aspect.

At the stage-door he discovered that no one knew what had become of the manager. He might possibly be at home.... It appeared that Max occupied exclusive quarters especially designed for him in the theatre building itself: an amiable idiosyncrasy not wholly lacking in advertising value, if one chose to consider it in that light.

His body-servant, a prematurely sour j.a.panese, suggested grudgingly that his employer might not improbably be found at Rector's or Louis Martin's. But he wasn't; not by Whitaker, at least.