VI
Hardy owed many of his special articles to a detective friend of his named Clendenning—a big, magnificent creature with a princely air and a marvelous wardrobe. When there was something interesting to be “pulled off,” Clendenning used to “tip off” Hardy; and when it was possible, the detective would take his friend along, to witness his exploits.
He was a very useful man for a certain sort of work, for his gentlemanly air made it possible for him to go without arousing suspicion into places where some of his colleagues would have been conspicuous. He was an adroit fellow, full of guile and ironic humor. Nothing in life gave him such pleasure as his “little surprises,” his neat traps for knaves of all sorts.
“If you’re around such and such a corner, at such and such a time,” he would say, “you might see something you could work into a story, old man.”
Hardy always followed such suggestions, and was always rewarded.
One evening Clendenning came into the little restaurant where Hardy almost always ate his dinner, and sat down at the table beside him.
“Want to see something interesting?” he asked.
“I do,” said Hardy.
“There’s a poor old feeble ass of a man who’s been complaining of a mysterious Persian woman,” he said. “He says she’s bewitched him, and he can’t keep away from her. He goes every night to get a psychic consultation, and she gives him advice about the stock market. He’s lost thousands already, but he says he thought he hadn’t interpreted her advice right, and kept going back for more. At last he came to headquarters with a complaint—says she’s a fraud. He says her place is crowded every evening with people clamoring for a chance to press ten dollars into the mysterious Persian’s hand and get a psychic message. Of course, it’s a pretty plain case for the police; but from what he said I thought it might be funny. I like to see how those things are done. It’s wonderful to see how easy it is to fool people. I like[Pg 23] to watch ’em work. She calls herself the Princess Zoraide. Ready?”
They rose and strolled out into the mild October night. They lighted cigars and sauntered uptown to a street of grim and moribund stone houses, given over to more or less mysterious enterprises. They stopped at one, rang the bell, and were admitted to a little drawing room furnished in moldy satin and poorly illuminated by a gas chandelier. Almost every seat was occupied, and the dreary light revealed a set of figures so dramatic, so interesting, that Hardy’s professional instincts were at once aroused.
He saw two women, probably a mother and daughter, sitting side by side, hand in hand, on a sofa, both weeping. He saw a white-bearded old man with his head thrown back and his dim eyes staring raptly at the ceiling. He saw a man who appeared to be on the brink of delirium tremens, his body twitching, his face contorted. He saw a great, fat blond woman in diamonds and silks and feathers, with a false, distrait smile on her painted face. In shadowy corners he saw other women whispering together. He was impressed by the atmosphere of pain, of terrible anxiety, that surrounded these people who came to receive relief and assuagement from the Princess Zoraide.
He sat down near the door with Clendenning, to await his turn. One by one he watched these people receive their summons, vanish into an inner room, and reappear again as shadows hastening through the dark hall to the front door. He would have liked to see their faces then, to see if the psychic consultation had in any way altered them.
The room had filled again, but Hardy was no longer observant. He was thinking. He was thinking of the immeasurable human longing after hope, and it occurred to him that perhaps even a charlatan might satisfy this.
The young woman who gave the summons to the waiting clients once more appeared before the curtains, and repeated her formula:
“The princess is ready for the next seeker!”
“You go first,” said Clendenning, and Hardy rose.
He walked across the room, past all those strained faces, opened the curtains, and entered a room completely dark, filled with a heavy perfume. A hand guided him to a chair, and he vaguely discerned a white form opposite him.
“What is your trouble?” asked a low voice.
He hesitated a moment. He hadn’t prepared anything to say.
“A love affair,” he said at last.
He knew that more questions would follow, but he was unable to arm himself, to set himself to invent something plausible. He was troubled, unhappy; he sat there in the dark with a blank and apprehensive mind.
“And what is the difficulty?” asked the Princess Zoraide. “What is it that you wish to know?”
He said nothing at all.
“Come, my friend!” she said a little impatiently. “Can you expect that I should enter into your heart and know its secrets? I have the most sympathetic nature in the world, but—”
He rose suddenly. He knew that phrase, that voice!
“What? Is it you?” he cried.
“I? Who? What is it that you mean?” she faltered.
“Mme. Sensobiareff!”
She gave a sigh that was like a groan.
“Yes,” she said. “See how I am obliged to gain my living! Ah, well! But why do you come here? Have you some trouble, my dear?”
“No! Listen! Don’t you know how dangerous this is? It’s illegal—it’s not allowed.”
“I do no harm.”
“But it’s against the law.”
“No one will trouble about me, so obscure, so—”
“The man who came with me is a detective. You’ll be arrested.”
“My God!” she cried. “My God! I—arrested?”
To him, an American, her alarm seemed exaggerated. To be arrested had not the same terrible meaning that it had for her. The hand that had clutched his arm trembled violently.
“Arrested? No, no! I do no harm. I help many people. I am very psychic. I am very sympathetic. I comprehend the troubles of others. If you knew! So many people bring their friends to me, because I have helped them! Oh, no! I cannot be arrested! Oh, my friend! At my age! And I am so alone here, in a[Pg 24] foreign land! It will kill me! I shall die!”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Wait! Let me think! Can you slip out without being seen? I will wait for you on the corner of Fifth Avenue. Hurry!”
He went stealthily down the dark hall, opened the front door, and went out. He didn’t know whether the formidable Clendenning had seen him or not. He expected every moment to feel a hand on his shoulder, to see that handsome and ironic face; and then he would be lost. He felt himself absolutely incapable of deceiving Clendenning, or of outwitting him.
But no one came. Hardy stood in the shadow, nervous as a cat, watching the quiet street. He saw some one go up the steps of the house, and enter, but no one came out. Why didn’t she hurry? Had Clendenning already seized her?
He stopped a passing taxi and told the driver to wait, and once more he looked down the silent street. Certainly Clendenning would be growing impatient; if she didn’t come soon—
He was startled to hear her voice behind him.
“I left by the back door and went through the yards to the next street,” she whispered. “I am sure that no one saw me. Oh, my friend!”
He hurried her into the taxi.
“Be quick!” he said to the driver.
He took her to his lodging house, where they entered unobserved and went upstairs to his little room. He locked the door behind them and sat down on the bed, trying to smile, to reassure her; but he expected every moment to hear a knock at the door, and the detective’s voice, demanding satisfaction for this outrageous betrayal. What in Heaven’s name was he to do with her?
“Now, you know,” he said, with a distorted smile, “it wouldn’t be such a serious matter, even if you were arrested. Perhaps a fine—”
“No!” she said firmly. “I should die. If they come to arrest me, I shall kill myself. I have a pistol here in my hand bag!”
“Nonsense!” he cried impatiently. “Don’t be so absurd!”
“Do you think, then, that I have so much to live for?” she asked. “I have nothing—nothing at all. When you went away, without a word—I had thought I should always have you. Well, never mind; let us not speak of it. I am a foolish old woman. Let us say no more.”
He stared at her with a new idea dawning upon him. She wasn’t old. She wasn’t much over forty, he imagined, and she had certainly not renounced the intention to charm. He observed her queer little hat, made up of odds and ends of jet, lace, and satin, her carefully powdered face, her earrings, her drab hair artfully disposed, all her harmless coquetry. He recalled all that she had done for him, how she had nursed him and provided for all his wants. He thought of his base suspicions with shame. The poor soul had simply been holding her psychic consultations to earn money—so much of which she had used for him.
Why hadn’t he seen it before? She loved him—it must be that! For what other reason would a woman do all that she had done?
What sublime sacrifices she had made, and how brutally he had rewarded her! He thought he had never heard of so generous and noble a nature before. He felt crushed and immeasurably humiliated before her—her who had almost undoubtedly saved his life.
“Why shouldn’t I make a sacrifice?” he asked himself. “What better could I do with my life than to try to make her happy? I’m not much good. I’ll never be much use any other way.”
He began to walk up and down the room.
“Of course she’s at least twelve years older than I; but she’s a charming, intelligent woman, and I respect her.”
And then the unworthy thought came to him—what a startling and distinguished thing it would be to marry her!
He stopped short.
“Mme. Sensobiareff,” he said, with dignity, “will you marry me?”
“What?” she asked with a frown.
“I know I’ve acted badly, but I—at the time I didn’t understand. I didn’t really appreciate you; but now—if you will—”
“Marry you!” she said, with a look that amazed him. “Are you mad?”
“But—”
“Is it possible that you didn’t know?” she said. “Couldn’t you see? That man—that saint—”
She began to weep, holding a tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes.
“One of the master minds of Russia—a noble soul—the kindest and best of men!” she sobbed. “Is it possible that[Pg 25] you think—oh, how little you know of women! You think I would replace him?”
“Replace him by you,” her tone implied.
Hardy was completely taken aback. He couldn’t speak.
“No,” she said, drying her eyes. “I have thought of nothing but him. Only help me to get away, where I shall be safe, and then forget me! I am the most unhappy wretch in the world. I have wished only to gain my living, and it seems that I have become a criminal. Only save me from this disgrace!”
“Yes, of course!” he said hurriedly. “Let me see!”
He fancied he heard a footstep on the stairs. He turned pale.
“Have you any money?” he cried. “If you could go to Canada—”
“Yes, I have money. In time, if it had not been for this, I should have become rich. But why are you so pale? Is there danger?”
“There’s no time to lose. Are you ready?”
She rose, adjusted her queer little hat before his mirror, and carefully patted her eyes.
“I am ready,” she said.
They went down the stairs and through the sleeping house with noiseless steps.
“Wait!” said Hardy. “Let me look first!”
He went out into the street and looked carefully up and down. No one there! He returned to fetch her. She took his arm with a pathetic, appealing gesture, and they went off through the quietest and darkest streets, both filled with haste and dread, unable to speak.
She was terribly out of breath when they reached the Grand Central Station. While he bought her ticket, she sat panting on a bench, her face concealed by a thick veil, but her little plump hands clasped passionately. A more forlorn, utterly foreign figure couldn’t be imagined.
They had nearly an hour to wait. He sat down beside her and tried to reassure her.
“You needn’t worry,” he said. “I’m sure there won’t be much of a search for you, and probably there’s no fear of further trouble. Only—you’ll never do that again, will you?”
“Never!”
“What will you do? Write me as soon as you reach Montreal. I’ll be anxious until I hear from you.”
“Yes, I shall write,” she said.
“How will you manage there?”
“I shall find a way.”
He persuaded her to take a cup of coffee and a sandwich at the lunch counter. Then he bought her some magazines and a box of chocolates.
“It’s time for you to go now,” he said. “I want you to know that never, as long as I live, shall I forget what you did for me. It was—”
“Hush!” she said. “You are repaying me, my dear. I only hope I have not brought you any trouble.”
The image of Clendenning rose up before him, but he answered valiantly:
“Certainly not! But when I think of what you did for me—a stranger—”
He could no longer repress the question which tormented him.
“But why did you do it? Why were you so good to me?”
She raised her veil and smiled at him.
“Ah, my dear!” she said “It is the Russian heart![Pg 26]”
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
SEPTEMBER, 1922
Vol. LXXVI NUMBER 4
Hanging’s Too Good for Him
THE PATHETIC STORY OF TOMMY ELLINGER, OF NEW YORK, AND AN INNOCENT YOUNG GIRL FROM THE COUNTRY
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
HE first emerged from obscurity at his father’s funeral. He was the only son and the heir to everything, and therefore, of course, the center of interest; but immediately and forever he destroyed all the tepid sympathy and good will of the assembled relatives by his curious air of immense carelessness, his foppish nonchalance.
He hadn’t even the decency to wear a dark suit, they observed. He was dressed in light gray, evidently quite new, and he kept his hands in his pockets. It never occurred to any of them that his indifference might be a clumsy effort to conceal an immeasurable embarrassment. Neither did any one else remember what he remembered—that his father had detested any sort of formal mourning. And it was Tommy’s destiny always to do a thing in the wrong way, always to antagonize, invariably to blunder.
It was not regret for the loss of his father, or any great regard for his opinions, that caused Tommy to remember and to respect his wishes. It was nothing more than a naïve and kindly sentimentality. His father had been a horrible bully to him, the great bogey of his childhood. His mother had died when he was very little, and he had been sent off to boarding school at once.
It seemed to the family that Tommy had always been at school, winter and summer. Once in a great while he had emerged at some cousin’s Christmas party, a rather silly blond boy in military uniform, always spoken of as “poor little Tommy Ellinger.” There were no family rumors or traditions about him, no reports of his behavior at school.
Now, however, that he had definitely come to life, it was necessary for the family to decide upon him, and they decided unfavorably. He got, then and there, the name of being “defiant” and “conceited.”
His father’s elder brother was to be his guardian until he was twenty-one—a task which disgusted and appalled Uncle James. He was an old bachelor lawyer, living in a hotel. Naturally his first thought for Tommy was college, which would remove the boy for all his minority, and even longer; but Tommy fought desperately against that. His hatred for books, for herding with other young males, for all the bullying and chaffing which terrified his awkward innocence, for the competition which dazed his lumbering mind, made him unusually resolute. Business, too, he summarily repudiated.
“Then what do you intend to do?” his uncle demanded, with false patience.
“Well,” said Tommy desperately, “why couldn’t I be a lawyer, like you?”
His uncle looked at him with a grim smile, and answered nothing. The subject was dropped for the time being, and Tommy went to live at his uncle’s hotel, to make up his mind about his very important future. He lived a wretched sort of life, forever hanging about the lobby, or sitting through vaudeville shows and musical comedies. He ate breakfast with his exasperated old uncle every morning, and dinner almost every evening.
There was something peculiarly and intolerably irritating about Tommy—some quality which, in spite of his invariable good temper and his ingratiating manners, infuriated his uncle. A perfect young ass, the old lawyer called him.
Why was it that the qualities which would have been so endearing in a girl of eighteen were so maddening in Tommy? Why was he, with his youth, his boundless good will,[Pg 28] his plaintive innocence, really nothing on earth but a young ass?
He was a great lanky boy with a naïve, good-humored face and a preposterous foppish air, a man-of-the-world air; wearing clothes ostentatiously correct and an amazing eyeglass with a broad black ribbon. He imagined that he looked like a foreign diplomat, while at the bottom of his heart he was quite conscious of being and looking a puppy. He swaggered, but without any self-assurance.
He devoted great thought to his clothes, and he could not refrain from mentioning his sartorial inventions and improvements to his uncle.
“What do you think of the cut of this coat?” he would ask. “Do you notice this shoulder? Rather good, eh?”
“Beautiful!” his uncle would say. “I never saw such grace and elegance—a regular Beau Brummel! You’re fascinating. There’s nothing that interests me like the cut of your coats!”
Then Tommy would open the evening paper and laugh loudly and ostentatiously at something in it, to show how undisturbed he was.
“Why don’t you go out?” the old gentleman used to ask, often and often, when, their dinner finished, they went up together in the lift to the little sitting room they shared. “What’s the matter with you, Thomas? A boy of your age, sitting at home here with an old fellow like me, night after night! Why don’t you go out somewhere and enjoy yourself? Haven’t you any friends?”
Well, he hadn’t. All the boys he had known and liked in the military academy up the Hudson had come from the farthest ends of the country—from Texas, from California, from Maine. He had never been particularly popular, anyhow, and he was too shy and too ridiculous to make friends now.
His uncle attached great importance to this, for he himself had scores of friends. He wished Tommy to be a sort of creature the like of which is no longer to be found—the traditional, old-fashioned beau, the arbiter of elegance, welcomed everywhere, affable, agreeable, but forever unattached, the society man of a past generation. He supplied the boy with spending money, and introduced him to a few charming young married women and a great many old bachelors.
“Now go ahead!” he told him. “Make yourself popular! Make yourself liked! A young man of your age, of good family, with a little money in your pockets, with good prospects!”
He was invited to one or two sedate houses, for his uncle’s sake, but nothing came of it. The society life toward which his uncle urged him forever eluded him. In fact, he had no life of any sort. He was only waiting, hanging about in innocent and dreary idleness, unable to believe that life should so cheat him of every joy, every excitement.
It was spring when Tommy’s father died and he left the military academy. He spent a horrible summer with his uncle, in a hotel in town, or at other similar hotels in the mountains, on the coast, anywhere and everywhere. Then came a still worse winter, during which the old gentleman’s exasperation rose to a fury.
They would go now and then to a musical comedy of the liveliest sort, this being the Uncle James’s idea of what the boy ought to like. When the old man saw him sitting there not liking it, when he saw him not caring for or comprehending wines, a barbarian as to food, absolutely indifferent to the arts, and hopeless in regard to sport, he became almost homicidal.
“Go away!” he shouted at him. “Go and spend this summer by yourself! I won’t waste the money on taking you to a decent place. Go on a farm! Go to some cheap, miserable, damnable little country boarding house, where you can sit and gape all day, like the booby you are!”
Tommy felt that it would be paradise now to get away from his uncle, no matter where. The idea of going off alone, unbullied, unthwarted, quite dazzled him. He was only too ready to go anywhere his uncle suggested.
So Uncle James answered several newspaper advertisements, and at last found a place which he felt would be suitable. He wrote and made all arrangements, and then gave Tommy his directions, money that was to last him for a month, and the following advice:
“Don’t make a fool of yourself about any of the girls there. Remember, you haven’t a penny for the next three years except what I choose to allow you; and if you get yourself mixed up or compromised, I won’t help you. I won’t recognize any responsibility of that sort![Pg 29]”
Tommy turned scarlet.
“Not in my line, Uncle James!” he replied, with extreme jauntiness. And off he went.