The Girl in the Mirror Part 23

"Divil a word did he say. He was in a hurry, that lad. He had a gang of three men with him, and they had the place empty in ten minutes. I lent 'em a hand, an' he give me a dollar, and that's the last I saw of him."

A sudden thought struck the watchman. "Where was you all the time?" he asked with interest.

"In the cellar."

The watchman nodded, understandingly.

"You're too young for that sort of thing, me boy. Now, I'm no teetotaler meself," he went on argumentatively. "A gla.s.s once in a while is all right, if a man knows whin to stop. But--"

"How about that hat?" interrupted the restive victim of this homily.

"Have you got one handy?"

"I have."

The watchman disappeared into a shadowy corner and returned with a battered derby.

"An' a fine grand hat it is!" he earnestly a.s.sured the new owner, as he handed it over.

Laurie took the hat and put it on his head, where, being too small for him, it perched at a rakish angle. He dropped the bank-note into his own silk hat, and handed them to his companion, who accepted them without visible emotion. Evidently, brief though his stay in the building had been, Herbert Ransome Shaw had accustomed its watchman to surprises.

Laurie's last glimpse of the man as he hurried away showed him, with extreme efficiency and the swift simultaneous use of two well-trained hands, putting the silk hat on his head and the bill in his pocket.

Laurie rushed through the early East Side streets. He was not often abroad at this hour, and even in his anxiety it surprised him to discover how many were abroad so early in the morning. The streets seemed full of pretty girls, hastening to factories and offices, and of briskly stepping men and women, representing types that also would ordinarily catch the attention of the young playwright. But now he had neither thought nor eyes for them.

His urgent needs were first the a.s.surance that Doris was safe, and next the privacy of his own rooms, a bath, and a change of clothing.

Obviously, he could not present himself to Doris in the sketchy ensemble he presented now; or could he? He decided that he could, and must. To remain in his present state of suspense a moment longer than he need do was unthinkable.

In a surprisingly short time he was in the studio building, facing the man Sam had called Henry, a yawning night elevator man who regarded him and his questions with a pessimism partly due to the lack of sleep and fatigue. These combined influences led him to make short work of getting rid of this unkempt and unseasonable caller.

"No, sah," he said. "Miss Mayo don' receive no callers at dis yere hour.

No, sah, Sam don' come on tell eight o'clock. No, sah, I cain't take no messages to no ladies what ain't out dey beds yit. I got to perteck dese yere folks, I has," he ended austerely.

The caller peeled a bill from his ever-ready roll, and the face of the building's guardian angel changed and softened.

"P'raps I could jes' knock on Miss Mayo's do'," he suggested after a thought-filled interval.

"That's all I want," agreed Laurie. "Knock at her door and ask her if Mr. Devon may call at nine and take her out to breakfast. Tell her he has something very important to say to her."

"Yaas, sah."

The guardian was all humility. He accepted the bill, and almost simultaneously the elevator rose out of sight. The interval before its return was surprisingly short, but too long for the nerves of the caller. Laurie, pacing the lower hall, filled it with apprehensions and visions which drove the blood from his heart. He could have embraced Henry when the latter appeared, wearing an expansively rea.s.suring grin.

"Miss Mayo she say, 'Yaas,'" he briefly reported.

Under the force of the nervous reaction he experienced, Laurie actually caught the man's arm.

"She's there?" he jerked out. "You're sure of it?"

"Yaas, sah." Henry spoke soothingly. By this time he had made a diagnosis of the caller's condition which agreed with that of the night-watchman Laurie had just interviewed.

"She say, 'Yaas,'" he repeated. "I done say what you tol' me, and she say, 'Tell de genman, Yaas,' jes' like dat."

"All right." Laurie nodded and strode off. For the first time he was breathing naturally and freely. She was there. She was safe. In a little more than an hour he would see her. In the meantime his urgent needs were a bath and a change of clothing. As soon as he was dressed he would go back to the studio building and keep watch in the corridors until she was ready. Then, after breakfast, he would personally conduct her to the security of Louise Ordway's home. Louise need not see her, if she did not feel up to it, but she would surely give her asylum after hearing Laurie's experiences of the night.

That was his plan. It seemed a good one. He did not admit even to himself that under the air of sang-froid he wore as a garment, every instinct in him was crying out for the sound of Doris's voice. Also, as he hurried along, he was conscious that a definite change was taking place in his att.i.tude toward Herbert Ransome Shaw. Slowly, reluctantly, but fully, he had now accepted the fact that "Bertie" represented a force that must be reckoned with.

He inserted the latch-key into the door of his apartment with an inward prayer that Bangs would not be visible, and for a moment he hoped it had been granted. But when he entered their common dressing-room he found his chum there, in the last stages of his usual careful toilet. He greeted Laurie without surprise or comment, in the detached, absent manner he had a.s.sumed of late, and Laurie hurried into the bath-room and turned on the hot water, glad of the excuse to escape even a tete-a-tete.

That greeting of Bangs's added the final notes to the minor symphony life was playing for him this morning. As he lay back in the hot water, relaxing his stiff, bruised body, the thought came that possibly he and Rodney were really approaching the final breaking-point. Bangs was not ordinarily a patient chap. He was too impetuous and high-strung for that. But he had been wonderfully patient with this friend of his heart.

If it were true that the friends.h.i.+p was dying under the strain put upon it, and Laurie knew how possible this was, and how swift and intense were Bangs's reactions, life henceforth, however full it might be, would lack an element that had been singularly vital and comforting. He tried to think of what future days would be without Bangs's exuberant personality to fill them with work and color; but he could not picture them; and as the effort merely added to the gloom that enveloped him, he abandoned it and again gave himself up to thoughts of Doris.

As he hurried into his clothes a strong temptation came to him to tell Bangs the whole story. Then Bangs would understand everything, and he, Laurie, would have the benefit of Rodney's advice and help in untying Doris's tangle.

Doris! Again she swam into the foreground of his consciousness with a vividness that made his senses tingle. He was sitting on a low chair, lacing his shoes, and his fingers shook as he finished the task. He dressed with almost frantic haste, urged on by a fear that, despite his efforts, was shaping itself into a mental panic. Then, hair-brushes in hand, he faced his familiar mirror, and recoiled with an exclamation.

Doris was not there, but her window was, and hanging from its center catch was something bright that caught his eye and instantaneous recognition.

It was a small Roman scarf, with a narrow, vivid stripe.

CHAPTER XII

DORIS TAKES A JOURNEY

Within five minutes he was in the studio building across the square, frantically punching the elevator bell. Outwardly he showed no signs of the anxiety that racked him, but presented to Sam, when that appreciative youth stopped his elevator at the ground floor, the sartorial perfection which Sam always vastly admired and sometimes dreamed of imitating. But for such perfection Sam had no eyes to-day.

At this early hour--it was not much more than half-past eight--he had brought down only two pa.s.sengers, and no one but Laurie was waiting for the upward journey. When the two tenants of the building had walked far enough toward its front entrance to be out of ear-shot, Sam grasped Laurie's arm and almost dragged him into the car. As he did so, he hissed four words.

"She gone, Mist' Devon!"

"Gone! Where? When?"

Laurie had not expected this. He realized now that he should have done so. His failure to take in the possibility of her going was part of his infernal optimism, of his inability even now to take her situation at its face-value. Sam was answering his questions:

"'Bout eight, jes' after Henry went and I come on. An aut'mobile stop in front de do', an' dat man wid de eyes he come in. I try stop him fum takin' de car, but he push me on one side an' order me up, like he was Wilson hisself. So I took him to de top flo'. But when we got dere an'

he went to Miss Mayo's do', I jes' kep' de car right dere an' watch him."

"Good boy! What happened?"

"He knock an' nuffin' happen. Den he call out, 'Doris, Doris,' jes' like dat, an' she come an' talk to him; but she didn't open de do'."

"Could you hear what else he said?"

"No, sah. After dat he whisper to her, hissin' like a snake."

Laurie set his teeth. Even Sam felt the ophidian in Shaw.