The Girl and The Bill Part 27

"But I do," he protested. "I am absolutely in your hands."

He heard her sigh faintly. "I'm going to put down the window now," she said. "It ain't safe for me to stand here talking to you unless I do.

That Arima fellow might pop up the fire-escape any time."

She was back in a few moments. He had heard the window creak down, and had wondered whether the action would add to Arima's suspicion.

"If he comes up now," she explained in an undertone, "the glare on the outside of the window will keep him from seeing in very plain."

After that she did not speak for some time, but the occasional movements of her body, as she leaned against the panel, were audible to Orme. He found himself wondering about her--how she had happened to take up the career of fortune-telling. She must have been a handsome woman; even now she was not unattractive.

The delay grew more and more irksome. It seemed to Orme as though he had been behind the panel for hours. After a while he asked:

"What time is it?"

"About two o'clock. Ain't you hungry?"

Orme laughed softly. "I hadn't thought about it."

"Wait a minute." She moved away. When she returned she pulled up the hanging and opened the panel. In her hand was a thick sandwich. "I was just going to eat my own lunch when you came back through the window,"

she explained.

He took the sandwich. She looked at him boldly. He was standing close to her in the opening. There was an expression that was almost defiant in her eyes. "I--I want my present."

"You shall have it, Madame Alia," he said.

"You ain't my kind--and it won't make no difference to you." Her voice faltered and her eyes dropped. "I want you to kiss me."

Orme looked at her, and understood. He put his arms around her and kissed her gently on the lips. There was no disloyalty in it. He was simply satisfying the craving of this poor woman's soul--a craving for a tribute to which she could always revert as the symbol of a high friendliness.

She felt that he was of a different world; he knew that the world was all one, though part.i.tioned off by artificial barriers, but he could not correct her view.

She clung to him for a moment after his lips left hers, then released herself from his clasp and moved back into the room, her face averted.

Was it to hide a blush? Orme did not ask himself, but respecting her reticence of spirit, silently closed the panel and was again in darkness.

For a time he stood there quietly. His back was against the wall,--his hands easily touched the paneling that shut him off from the room. He wondered what this secret place was for, and taking a match from his pocket, he lighted it.

The enclosure seemed to extend all the way across the side of the room.

Farther along, lying on the floor and standing against the wall, were contrivances of which at first he could make nothing--poles, pieces of tin, and--were those masks, heaped in the corner? From a row of pegs hung long robes--white and black.

The truth flashed into Orme's mind. He was in Madame Alia's ghost-closet!

CHAPTER XII

POWER OF DARKNESS

To Orme the next half-hour was very long. He seated himself upon the floor of the closet and ate the sandwich which the clairvoyant had brought him. Occasionally he could hear her moving about the apartment.

"Poor charlatan!" he thought. "She is herself a 'good sort.' I suppose she excuses the sham of her profession on the ground that it deceives many persons into happiness."

He struck another match and looked again at the ghostly paraphernalia about him. Near him hung a black robe with a large hood. He crushed one of the folds in his hands and was surprised to discover how thin it was and into how small s.p.a.ce it could be compressed. Not far away stood several pairs of large slippers of soft black felt. The white robes were also of thinnest gossamer--flimsy stuff that swayed like smoke when he breathed toward it.

By the light of a third match he looked more carefully at the other apparatus. There was a large pair of angel-wings, of the conventional shape. The a.s.sortment of masks was sufficiently varied for the representation of many types of men and women of different ages.

The match burned down to his fingers, and again he sat in darkness, wondering at the elaborateness of the medium's outfit. She was a fraud, but he liked her--yes, pitied her--and he felt inclined to excuse in so far as he could. For the kiss which he had given her he felt no regret; it was hers, in all innocence, for what of good she might have found in it.

The minutes dragged by. He thought of the precious doc.u.ments, safe in the inside pocket of his coat. What they were, he did not try to determine, but it was plain that they must be of international importance. The talk of s.h.i.+ps and Alcatrante's references to commissions had puzzled him. But suddenly came to his mind the newspaper rumors that j.a.pan was secretly adding vessels to her navy through the agency of a South American republic which was having cruisers and battle-s.h.i.+ps built in Europe, to turn them over at their completion, to the j.a.panese. There was, as yet, no international proof of this policy, for none of the s.h.i.+ps had been completed, but the South American country was certainly adopting a policy of naval construction quite out of proportion to her position among the Powers.

How came the girl to be involved in this mix-up of nations? Through her father, of course--but who was he? A concessionaire? Her courage and determination, employed against shrewd men, was as notable as the beauty of her face and mind, for she was like a queen in her a.s.sured comprehension.

How it quickened his heart to think of her! The poor, faded medium, with the smolder of old flames in her eyes, with the records of hard experience written on her face, was a child in stature beside the girl--a child with yearnings that could never be satisfied.

Well, the girl had doubted him. He could not wonder at that, for the facts were all against him, and she had known him only for a few hours.

Yet he had hoped--he had believed--that she would know the truth and the devotion in him without further evidence. Perhaps he had expected too much from her n.o.ble insight. After all--and that was part of the loveliness of her--she was a very human girl.

The panel swung open, and Madame Alia stood looking down at him. She spoke in an undertone.

"The j.a.ps are still watching. Arima is sitting on the fire-escape by his window, and I can hear the other fellow moving around in the hall outside my door. I think they're on to your being here."

Orme thought for a minute. "I've got to get away soon," he said. "I don't mind telling you that there are papers that must be delivered before twelve o'clock to-night."

"Can I take them for you?"

"I don't know where to tell you to take them."

She sighed. "I guess you don't trust me."

"Trust you? Of course, I do. But the truth is, Madame Alia, that it is going to need hard work on my part to find the person to whom the papers belong. I don't even know his name." Secretly he condemned himself now, because he had not overcome his scruples and looked at the address on the envelope while he had the chance.

Again she sighed. "Well," she said, "of course, it's beyond me. Do you--do you mind my knowing _your_ name?"

"Pardon me," he said. "I didn't realize that you didn't know it already.

My name is Robert Orme."

She looked at him with a smile. "Well, Mr. Orme, I'll get you out of this. I think I know a way. But you'll have to do just what I tell you."

"I depend on you," he said.

She laid her hand on his shoulder with a friendly pressure. "You'll have to wait in here a while longer--and you'll have to keep mighty quiet.

I've got a circle at three o'clock--a seance. They come once a week, and I can't well put them off. You see, I work alone. It's a small circle, and I never liked the idea of helpers; they're likely to give you away sooner or later. I stretch a curtain across this corner for a cabinet, and they tie me to a chair--and then things happen." She smiled faintly.

"I know _you_ won't hurt my game."

"All your secrets are safe with me." He glanced at the dark interior of the closet.

"I didn't know any other place to put you," she said simply. "They'd have got you, if you had went to the hall--Sh-h!" The panel closed and she was away. A moment later he heard her talking with Arima, who apparently had again climbed up to her window.

"Thief must be here," said Arima. "He not been in hall. My friend know.