GRIGGS GETS AN ORDER
At eight o'clock Laurie found Doris sitting under the shade of a reading-lamp in her studio, deep in the pages of a sophisticated French novel and radiating an almost oppressive atmosphere of well-being.
Subconsciously, he resented this. His mood was keyed to tragedy. But he returned her half-serious, half-mocking smile with one as enigmatic, shook hands with grave formality, and surveyed with mild interest a modest heap of bank-notes of small denominations that lay on the table, catching the room's high lights. Following his glance, Doris nodded complacently.
"I left them there for you to see," she remarked.
"Did the kind gentleman under the three balls give you all that?"
"He did. Count it."
Laurie frowned.
"Don't be so arrogant about your wealth. It's fleeting. Any copy-book will tell you so."
She opened a small drawer in the table, swept the bills into it, and casually closed it. Laurie stared.
"Are you going to leave it there? Just like that?"
She looked patient.
"Why not?"
"I begin to understand why you are sometimes financially cramped."
He took the bills, smoothed them out flat, rolled back the rug to the edge of the table, laid the money under it, and carefully replaced the rug.
"That's the place to put it," he observed, with calm satisfaction. "No one connected with a studio ever lifts a rug. Bangs and I used to throw our money under the furniture, and pick it up as we needed it; but others sometimes reached it first. This way is better. How lovely you look!" he added. As he spoke he comfortably seated himself on the other side of the reading-lamp, and moved the lamp to a point where it would not obstruct his view of her.
She did look lovely. She had put on an evening gown, very simply made, but rich in the Oriental coloring she loved. She was like Louise in that. Laurie's thoughts swung to the latter's sick-room, and his brilliant young face grew somber. The girl lounging in the big chair observed the sudden change in his expression. She pushed a box of cigarettes toward him.
"Smoke if you like," she said, indifferently. "All my friends do."
He caught the phrase. Then she had friends!
"Including Herbert Ransome Shaw?" he asked, as he lit a match.
"Don't include him among my friends! But—he was here this afternoon."
"He was!" In his rising interest Laurie nearly let the match go out. "What did he want?"
"To warn me to have nothing to do with you."
"I like his infernal cheek!"
Laurie lit the cigarette and puffed at it savagely. Then, rising, he drew his chair forward and sat down facing her.
"See here," he said quietly, "you'd better tell me the whole story. I can't help you much if I'm kept in the dark. But if you'll let me into things—And before I forget it," he interrupted himself to interject, "I want to bring a friend of mine to call on you. She will be a tower of strength. She's a Russian, and one of the best women I know."
She listened with a slight smile.
"What's her name?"
"Miss Orleneff, Sonya Orleneff, a great pal of my sister's and an all-round good sort. I'd like to bring her in to-morrow afternoon. Will five be convenient?"
"No." She spoke now with the curtness of the morning. "In no circumstances," she added, decisively.
"But—why?"
He was dazed. If ever a knight errant worked under greater difficulties than these, Laurie told himself, he'd like to know the poor chap's name.
"I have no wish to meet Miss Orleneff."
"But she's an ideal person for you to know, experienced, sympathetic, and understanding. She did a lot for my sister last year. I must tell you all about that sometime. She could do more for you—"
"Mr. Devon!" The finality of her tone brought him up short. "We must understand each other."
"I should like nothing better." He, too, was suddenly formal.
"This morning you projected yourself into my life."
"Literally," he cordially agreed.
"I am grateful to you for what you did and what you wish to do. But I will not meet any more strangers. I will not meet Miss Orleneff, or any one else. Is that clear?"
"Oh, perfectly!" Laurie sighed. "Of course you're a crowned head," he mused aloud. "I had forgotten. Would you like my head on a charger, or anything like that?"
She studied him thoughtfully.
"There is someone outside that door!" she whispered
"Almost from the first," she said, "and except for an occasional minute or two, you have refused to be serious. That interests me. Why is it? Aren't you willing to realize that there are real troubles in the world, terrible troubles, that the bravest go down under?"
"Of course." He was serious now. He had begun to realize that fully. "It's my unfortunate manner, I suppose," he defended himself. "I've never taken anything seriously for very long. It's hard to form the habit, all of a sudden."
"You will have to take me seriously."
He made a large gesture of acceptance.
"All right," he promised. "That brings us back to where we were. Tell me the truth. If there's anything in it that really menaces you, you'll find me serious enough."
Before answering, she rose and opened the studio door, on which, he observed with approval, a strong new lock and an inside bolt had already been placed. He saw her peer up and down the hall. Then she closed and bolted the door, and returned to her chair. The precaution brought before him a mental vision of Herbert Ransome Shaw prowling about the dim corridors. He spoke incredulously.
"Are you really afraid of that chap?"
"I have good reason to be," she said quietly. She sat down in her chair again, rested her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, in the pose already so familiar to him, and added quietly, "He is the source of all my present trouble."
She stopped and turned her head to listen.
"Do you hear anything moving in the hall?" she asked, almost in a whisper.
"No. Shall I look?"
She shook her head. "Don't unbolt the door."
"You're nervous. I'm sure there's nothing there. Please go on," he urged. "Our little friend Bertie—"
Seeing her expression, he stopped short. "Forgive me," he said, humbly. "But the plain truth is, it's awfully hard for me to take that fellow seriously. Oh, I know he's venomous," he conceded, "but I can't help feeling that he hasn't as much power over you as you think he has."
He realized that she was listening, but not to him.
"There is some one outside that door!" she whispered.
Laurie leaped to the door as noiselessly as a cat, unbolted it, and flung it open. The hall was empty. He had an instantaneous impression that something as silent as a moving shadow had vanished around the staircase at the far end, but when he reached the spot he saw nothing save the descending iron spirals of successive stairways. He returned to his companion, smiling reassuringly.
"It's our nerves," he said. "In a few minutes more I shall be worrying about Bertie, myself."
"Bolt the door again," she directed.
He obeyed. She went on as if there had been no interruption to their talk.
"It isn't what he is," she admitted. "He himself is nothing, as you say. It's what is back of him that—that frightens me! Why don't you smoke?" she interrupted herself to ask.
Laurie automatically selected and lit another cigarette.
"I know what's going to be back of Bertie pretty soon," he darkly predicted. "Whoever he is, and whatever he is doing, he has a big jolt coming to him, and it's coming fast."
He laid down the cigarette and turned to her with his most charming expression, a wonderfully sweet smile, half shy, wholly boyish. Before this look, any one who loved Laurence Devon was helpless.
"Come," he said gently, "tell me the whole story. You know it's not curiosity that makes me ask. But how can I help you when I'm working in the dark?"
As she hesitated, his brilliant eyes, so softened now, continued to hold hers.
"And I want to help you," he added. "I want that privilege more than I want anything else in the world."
For a long moment she sat still, as if considering his words, her eyes on her hands, folded in her lap. The strange, deep flush he had noticed once before again stained her face. At last she straightened up with a quick movement, throwing back her shoulders as if to take on again some burden they had almost cast off.
"I am sorry to seem so mysterious," she said, "and so unresponsive. I will tell you this much, and it is more than I ought to say. In the situation we are in I am in his power, horribly so. He can crush me at any time he chooses."
"Then why doesn't he?"
The gentleness of her caller's voice softened the brusqueness of his words.
"Because—" She stopped again. For the first time she had become embarrassed and self-conscious. She made her climax in a rush: "Lately he insists that he has fallen in love with me!"
Laurie uttered an ejaculation. It was not a pretty one, but it nicely fitted the emergency.
"He has hoped that to save myself, and others, I will marry him, the contemptible, crawling snake!"
The listener was impressed by her comparison. Certainly there was something ophidian about Shaw. He himself had noticed it.
"Then, for the time being, you're really safe?" he suggested.
"No. His patience is exhausted. He is beginning to realize that I'd rather die."
"The police can stop all this nonsense." But Laurie spoke without his customary authority.
"Don't imagine that. The police know nothing about this matter, and they never will." A sudden thought struck her and she rose almost with a spring. He rose, too, staring at her in bewilderment. She caught his shoulders and held them tightly, in a grip wholly free from self-consciousness.
"If you warn the police," she said swiftly; "if you draw them into this, you will ruin everything. You will do me a harm that could never be undone. Give me your word that you won't. Please, please!"
She was almost shaking him now. Under the clasp of her hands on his shoulders Laurie paled a little, but his black eyes held hers steadily.
"Of course I promise," he said, slowly, "as you make such a point of it."
She removed her hands and stepped back.
"Please go now."
"So soon? Why, I've only just come!"
There was no mistaking the sincerity of this. It was a poignant outcry. Clearly, she was at the breaking-point. He took both her hands.
"This whole experience gives me the oddest feeling," he told her gently. "In one way, I seem to be dreaming it. Under it all there's a conviction that I'm on the track of the mystery; that everything will be cleared up, for us both, in another minute or two. It's merely an instinct. I can't explain it. But one thing I know. Sooner or later—sooner, I hope—I shall be able to work it out for you."
She seemed suddenly to remember that he was holding her hands. Flushing, she gently withdrew them. Then she turned, and with a brusque gesture walked away from him.
"I'm sorry I got you into this!" she cried.
"Don't worry about me." He smiled at her from the door he was holding open. "May I come and take you to lunch to-morrow?"
"Not to-morrow. The next day, perhaps."
"We've got to look for that job, you know."
"With all this?" She indicated with the toe of her slipper a significant spot on the rug.
Laurie regarded the slipper with approval. It was a beautiful slipper, on a charming foot. It so diverted his mind from the main issue of the conversation that he was in the elevator and half-way down to the ground floor before he recalled that issue. He was not disturbed. Doris had enough to go on with; and certainly he himself had sufficient scope for thought in the revelations she had just made.
As he walked down the outer steps of the studio building and emerged on the sidewalk, a figure detached itself from the shadow of a low iron fence and stealthily followed him. It was a short figure, overcoated out of recognition. It carried its hands in its pockets, and its head was thrust forward in a peculiar way. It kept a dozen feet behind him, until he reached the pretentious entrance of the apartment building where he dwelt.
Here, in the glaring light of two huge electric globes, conveniently held aloft for him by a pair of bronze warriors, Laurie turned suddenly, warned by the inner sense that tells us we are watched. The figure behind ducked modestly into the background, but not until he had recognized the round face and projecting eyes of Herbert Ransome Shaw.
Laurie checked a passionate impulse to hurl himself upon that lurking and unpleasant shape. Slowly but surely he was learning self-control. Martin, the elevator operator, and Griggs, the night hall man, were already bidding him good evening and regarding him with friendly and interested eyes. To see him suddenly fall upon and beat a shabby stranger would surprise and pain them, besides unpleasantly stirring up the neighborhood. A better opportunity would present itself, or could be made.
In the meantime, however, he must convey to Herbert Ransome Shaw some idea of the utter contempt in which he held him. Taking Griggs confidentially by the arm, Laurie pointed out the skulking shadow.
"See that?" he asked in ringing tones.
Griggs was a Goliath in proportions and deliberate in his movements. He took his time to discover the object young Devon indicated. In the shadow the object stirred restlessly.
"Yessir," Griggs then said, uncertainly. "It's—it's a man, sir."
"Is it?" asked Laurie with interest, and still in loud, clear tones. "I'm afraid you're mistaken. But whatever it is, step on it!"
He entered the elevator after this crisp instruction, and was wafted up to his rooms. The hall man moved hesitatingly down the building's three steps to the sidewalk. One never knew exactly what young Devon was getting at. Still, if he really wanted Griggs to step on anything—
Griggs stopped. A slight sensation of disappointment swept over him. He was a conscientious man who desired to do his duty. But there was absolutely nothing for him to step on, except the snow-covered and otherwise inoffensive pavement.