The Wood Fire in No. 3 Part 19

"'That is another bond of sympathy between us. I have one brother left.'

All this time her eyes had been riveted on his, boring into his own as if she was trying to read his very thoughts.

"'Is he in danger like me, Madame?' asked the Engineer with a smile.

"'Yes, we all are; we live in danger. I have been brought up in it.'

"'But why should I be?' and he handed her the card with the black edge.

"'You are not,' she said, crumpling the card in her hand and slipping it into her dress. 'It was only a very cheap ruse of mine. I saw you at the next table and knew your nationality at once. You can help me, if you will, and you are the only one who can. You seemed to be sent to me. I thought it all out and determined what to do. You see how calm I am, and yet my hands have been icy cold waiting for you. I dared not hope you would really come until I saw you enter and speak to Polski. But you cannot stay here; you may be seen and I do not want you to be seen--not now. We Poles are watched night and day; someone may come in and you might have to tell who you are, and that must not be.' Then she added cautiously, her eyes fastened on his, 'Your pa.s.sport--you have one, have you not?'

"'Yes, for all over Europe.'

"'Oh, yes; of course.' This came with a sigh of relief, as if she had dreaded another answer. 'That is the right way to travel while this revolution goes on. Yes, yes; a pa.s.sport is quite necessary. Now give me your address. Metropole? Which room? Number thirty-nine? Very well; I'll be there at eight o'clock to-morrow night. Never mind the coffee, I will pay for it with mine. Go--now--out the other door; not the one you came in. There is somebody coming--quick!'

"The tone of her voice and the look in her eye lifted him out of his seat and started him toward the door without another word. She was evidently accustomed to be obeyed.

"The next night at eight precisely there came a rap at his door and a woman wrapped in a coa.r.s.e shawl, and with a basket covered with a cloth on her arm, stood outside.

"'I have brought Monsieur's laundry,' she said. 'Shall I lay it in the bedroom or here in the salon?' and she stepped inside.

"The door shut, she laid the empty basket on the floor and threw back her shawl.

"'Don't be worried,' she said, turning the key in the lock, 'and don't ask any questions. I will go as I came. Someone might have stopped me. I got this basket and shawl from my own laundress. There will be no one here? You are sure? Then let me sit beside you and tell you what I could not last night.

"'Our people go to that cafe,' she continued, as she led him to the sofa, 'because, strange to say, the police think none of us would dare go there. That makes it the safest. Besides, every one of the servants is our friend.'

"Then she unfolded a yarn that made his hair stand on end. She had been banished from a little town in central Poland where she had taken part in the revolution. Two brothers had died in exile, the other was in hiding in Vienna. It was absolutely necessary that this remaining brother should get back to Warsaw. Not only her own life depended on it but the lives of their compatriots. Some papers which had been hidden were in danger of being discovered; these must be found and destroyed.

Her brother was now on his way to the hotel and the room in which they then sat; he would join them in an hour. At nine o'clock he would send his card up and must be received. His name was Matzoff--her own name before she was married. Would he lend him his clothes and his pa.s.sport?

She could not ask this of anyone but an American; when she saw him and looked into his face she knew G.o.d had sent him to her. Only Americans sympathized with her poor country. The pa.s.sport would be handed back to him in three days by the same man--Polski--who conducted him to her table at the Cafe Ivanoff; so would the clothes. He would not need either in that time. Would he save her and her people?'

"Well, you can imagine what happened. Like many other young fellows, carried off his feet by the picturesqueness of the whole affair--the appeal to his patriotism, to his love of justice, to all the things that count when you are twenty-five and have the world in a sling--he consented. It was agreed that she was to wait in the dressing-room, which also opened on the corridor, and show herself to the brother, and get him safely inside the dressing-room. The Engineer was not to see him come. If anything went wrong it was best that he could not identify him.

She would then help him dress--he was about the same build as the Engineer and could easily wear his clothes. Moreover, he was dark like the Engineer; black hair and black eyes and just his age. Indeed one reason she picked him out at the cafe on the Ring Stra.s.se was because he looked so much like her own brother.

"The two began to get ready for the expected arrival--a s.h.i.+rt and collar, tie, gloves, travelling suit, overcoat, and the Engineer's bag with his initials on it were laid out in the dressing-room, together with an umbrella and walking-stick and the pa.s.sport. He was to walk down the corridor and out of the hotel precisely as the young Engineer would walk out. If he could only see her brother he would know how complete the disguise would be; just his size--her own, really--her brother being small for a man and she being tall and broad for a woman.

"At nine o'clock she put her head out of the dressing-room door, laid her fingers on her lips, pushed the Engineer into the salon and locked the door. The brother evidently was approaching. Next he heard the dressing-room door click. Then the sound of a man rapidly changing his clothes could be heard. Then a soft click of the latch and a heavy step.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pushed the engineer into the salon.]

"Here his curiosity overcame him and he cautiously opened the salon door and peered down the corridor. A man carrying his bag, cane, and umbrella, an overcoat on his arm, was walking rapidly toward the staircase. He drew in his head and waited. Five minutes pa.s.sed, then ten. He tried the dressing-room door. It was still locked. Stepping out into the corridor he turned the k.n.o.b and walked into the dressing-room.

It was empty. On the floor was a pair of corsets, some petticoats, and a dress!"

"Skipped! Well, by Jove!" cried Marny. "Nihilist, wasn't she?"

"He never knew; doesn't to this day."

"What was she then?" persisted Marny.

"I don't know. My only solution was that she was herself in danger of her life and had cooked up the yarn about her brother to get out of Vienna."

"Did he get his pa.s.sport back?" asked Stirling.

"Yes, three months afterward by mail to his bankers from the Hotel Metropole. She, or somebody else, had been half over Europe with it; twice to St. Petersburg and once to Warsaw. The clothes and bag he never heard of. The waiter at the Cafe Ivanoff--the one she called Polski--had disappeared and he dare not make any inquiries."

"But I don't see why he was afraid, an American like him," broke in Marny.

"Let up, Marny!" exclaimed Boggs. "Don't spoil a good yarn. What difference does it make who she was? You've got a first rate doll, don't pick it to pieces to find out what it's stuffed with; give your imagination play and enjoy it. She suggests a dozen things to me, but I don't want any one of them _proved_. She might have been chief of a band of poisoners with a private graveyard in her cellar; her smile, perdition; her glance, death. She could also have eluded the Secret Service of Russia for years in disguises that the mother who bore her wouldn't have known her in;--her exploits the talk of all Europe. Then her miraculous escapes--one for instance across the frontier in a sledge on forged pa.s.sports, and the disguise of an officer, her maid dressed as an orderly, both of them smothered in priceless furs; her being trailed to her hotel by a sleuth; her lightning change of costume to low-neck gown and jewels given her by a Russian Grand Duke whose body was found in the Neva the morning after she left; the murder of the sleuth, with a card tied to the stiletto marked with a skull and crossbones. You fellows are going wild over this new French impressionistic craze--the vague, the mysterious, and the suggestive. Why not apply it to literature? If a man can paint a figure with three dabs of his brush, why can't a man draw a character or a situation with three strokes of his pen? You are too literal, old man!"

"Anything else, you overstuffed, loquacious sausage?" cried Marny.

"Yes," retorted Boggs. "That woman was no doubt a member of the----"

"Stop, you beggar!" cried Jack Stirling. "Don't let him get loose again, Marny! Stuff a pipe in his mouth. Boggs, you are the only man I know who can start his mouth going and go away and leave it. Here, fellows, get on your feet and line up and receive the spoilt child of fas.h.i.+on. He's coming upstairs: I know his step."

At this instant Woods's body was thrust around the jamb of the door. He still wore the rose in his b.u.t.ton-hole, the one Miss B. J.--the original of the portrait--had pinned there.

Mac sprang up and caught the intruder by the shoulders before he had time to open his mouth.

"Been having a tea, have you, you gilt-edged fraud! A highly perfumed powder-puff tea, with lace on the edges and two flounces. 'Oh, how exquisite, dear Mr. Woods! And is it really all hand-painted? and did you do it all yourself? How enormously clever you are--How lovely--How--' Got pretty sick of that sort of taffy after they had gormed you up with it for three hours, didn't you, Woods? and you had to come up where you could breathe! Now rip off that undertaker's coat, throw away that rose, get into that sketching jacket, and sit down here and disinfect yourself with a pipe--" and Mac's hearty laugh rang through the room.

PART IX

_Around the Embers of the Dying Fire._

Spring had come. The trees in the old Square were tuneful with impatient birds ready to move in and begin housekeeping as soon as the buds poked their yellow heads out of their nestings of bark. The eager sun, who had been trying all winter to gain the corner of Mac's studio window, had finally carried the sash and grimy pane by a.s.sault: its beams were now basking on the Daghestan rug in full defiance of the smouldering coals crouching half-dead in their bed of ashes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Around the embers of the dying fire.]

From an open window--Mac had thrown it wide--came a breath of summer air, telling of green fields and fleecy clouds; of lappings about the bows of canoes; of balsam beds under bark slants; of white scoured decks and dancing waves; of queer cafes under cool arched trees and snowy peaks against the blue.

The glorious old fire felt the sun's power and shuddered, trembling with an ill-defined fear. It knew its days were numbered, perhaps its hours.

No more romping and sky-larking; no more outbursts of crackling laughter; no more scurrying up the ghostly chimney, the madcap sparks playing hide-and-seek in the soot; no more hugging close of the old logs, warming themselves and everybody about them; no more jolly nights with the hearth swept and the pipes lighted, the faces of the smokers aglow with the radiance of the cheery blaze.

Its old enemy, the cold, had given up the fight and had crept away to hide in the North; so had the snow and the icy winds. No more! No more!

Spring had come. Summer was already calling. Now for big bowls of blossoms, their fragrance mingling with the pungent odor of slanting lines of smoke. Now for half-closed blinds, through which sunbeams peeped and restless insects buzzed in and out. Now for long afternoons, soft twilights, and wide-open windows, their sashes framing the stars.

Mac had noted the signs and was getting ready for the change. Already had he opened his dust-covered trunk and had hauled out, from a collection of tramping shoes, old straw hats, and summer clothes, a thin painting coat in place of his pet velveteen jacket. It was only at night that he raked out the coals hiding their faces in the ashes, gathered them together--the fire had never gone out since the day he lighted it--and encouraged them with a comforting log.

Most of the members had formed their plans for the summer; one or two had already bidden good-by to the Circle. Lonnegan was off trout-fis.h.i.+ng, and Jack Stirling was three days out--off the Banks really.

"Gone to look up Christine and the old boys and girls," Marny said; at which Mac shook his head, knowing the bee, and knowing also the kinds and varieties of flowers which grew in the gardens most frequented by that happy-go-lucky fellow.