V
That night was not a very comfortable one for Anthony. He lay awake for a long time, his straight-forward mind laboring with the facts of the day; when he did finally drop off, his sleep was not a deep one; it was thronged with grotesque images, and incidents that caricatured what he had seen and heard.
Once he awoke. It was a moon-lit night; through the window he could see the bell swinging in the tower across the way; he reasoned that it had just done striking, and the blows had awakened him. He tried to see the hour by his watch, but could not; so he arose and took it to the window. It was one o'clock. He stood moodily looking down into the street so silvered and quiet; from somewhere, a long way off, came the rumble of wheels and the notes of a coach horn; and he shivered as he thought of the harassed passengers, beginning a journey in the thin chill of the night.
He was about to turn from the window when a movement caught his eye in the shadow cast by the tower; it was a dim, leisurely movement, and well toward the edge, where the shadow met the moonlight sharply. Almost at once he saw its nature; the figures of two men came into the light and paused. They seemed on the point of separating, and the pause was for a parting word. They shook hands with the quick, hard clutch of persons well satisfied, and each turned away. But one, he who had faced eastward in the direction of the river, suddenly paused.
There was something familiar to Anthony in the gesture that stopped the other man; and the two joined once more in talk. However, it was but for a moment. The man with the familiar gesture seemed to ask a question, which the other answered, and in so doing lifted his hand and pointed at Anthony's window. The first man threw back his head; a ringing laugh broke the stillness, and Anthony at once recognized him; it was the man with the saddle-bags who had come ashore that morning from the New York packet.
Anthony watched the two separate; the one held steadily toward the river; the other crossed the street toward the inn; and a moment later Anthony heard the outer door open and close. He stood for a moment in the center of the floor and pondered; there was something in the scene he had just witnessed which started a cold shuddering in his blood—the same feeling he'd experienced on many a night as the wilderness closed around him, and he knew the shadows were peopled with gliding forms, each bearing a weapon that might let out his life.
But this was civilization! This was the capital city of the nation! The two men may have been cronies, detained somewhere by the flavor of a particular bottle. How was he to be sure that it was his window at which the man who had entered the inn had pointed? There were other windows; it may have been one of those. But, even though it had been his, what did it signify? A hundred reasons, each entirely innocent, might account for the gesture. The fancy that the thing held a danger amused his reason; but still the creeping continued in his blood, and instinct rang its warning in his pulse. He went to his chest, threw open the lid, and took out a heavy, knotted walking-stick, iron-shod and formidable. He was balancing this in his hand and regarding it from under frowning brows when he caught the sound of a light foot in the hall; it paused at his door; his head went up, and, clutching the cudgel, he stood listening.
The latch lifted softly; there was an instant's pause, and then the door began to push inward. Anthony saw a young man with a tall hat, a fashionably cut coat, with metal buttons, small-clothes, and shoes that had silver buckles. He carried himself very erect and with perfect composure. Closing the door after him, he advanced to the bedside, and took a chair. It was plain that in the uncertain light of the room, to which his eyes were not accustomed, he fancied the bed occupied, for he bent his head forward and addressed it.
"Now," said he, "if you'll be good enough to wake up, I'll have a few important words with you."
There was a pause, as he waited for the stirring of the sleeper; none followed, and he reached out his hand. As it met with only empty sheets, he exclaimed impatiently; and then out of the semi-darkness came the voice of Anthony.
"Perhaps," said he, "a little candle-light might improve matters."
"Oh," said the intruder, turning with perfect composure toward the sound, "so you are there? I took it for granted that at this hour you'd be abed."
Anthony struck a light and touched it to the wick of a candle; then, the knotted stick in his hand, he stood glowering at his visitor.
"I am sorry to disturb you," said the man. He placed his tall hat upon a table, and seemed quite at his ease. "Also," and he nodded at the cudgel, "I'm quite mortified to have given you alarm."
"You need not disturb yourself about that," said Anthony, grimly. "I'm accustomed to alarms, and also to what follows after." Then, with the sudden cut to his voice which always told of a rising temper, "What the devil do you mean by easing yourself into my room, like this?"
"Sit down," said the man, unruffled. "And let us talk."
"I warn you," said Anthony sharply, "that that won't do. I will not sit down, and I will have no talk with you except upon one subject. What are you doing here?"
The man crossed one leg upon the other and examined Anthony in the candle-light.
"I can see," said he, "that they've spoken the truth. Your temper lifts too quickly for a northern climate. If you'll be advised, you'll go quietly back to—is it New Orleans?"
There was something very clear in the voice; it was the crisp utterance of a man who knew his own mind, and had complete confidence in what he said. Anthony, as he looked at him, saw that he had a slim, elegant figure, that his face was of classic regularity; but there was a cold assurance in the eyes and a sneer about the lips.
"Once more," said Anthony, "what are you doing here?" He took a step forward, and his right hand closed about the handle of the stick. "Jocular reflections upon my temper, and impertinent advice, are not answers. Come, now!"
The intruder smiled, easily.
"I suppose," said he, "you are one who prides himself upon sticking to a point. It's a good quality, enough; but one should never permit such a thing to blind one to matters of more interest." He looked at Anthony with the same easy smile, and through it were the sneer and the cold confidence of the eyes. "This port is no place for you," he said. "Be advised. There is a ship sailing to-morrow for Havana; from there to New Orleans is no distance at all."
Anthony waited for no more. Like a wolf he was upon the other and had hauled him to his feet; then the iron-shod stick lashed out, showering blows upon the man's head and shoulders. Overwhelmed by the suddenness of the attack, the intruder fell back against the wall; Anthony threw open the door, seized him by the scruff of the neck, much as one might an offending cur, and, without a word, pitched him into the hall, and his hat after him and slammed the door. Then he stood his weapon in a corner, put out the candle, got back into bed and fell instantly asleep.
Quite early in the morning he arose; he descended the stairs briskly, his mind fully made up as to what he should do. He ate his breakfast of hot eggs, and cold sliced ham, and breast of fowl; and he drank his tea. Then he took up the knotted stick and went stumping determinedly through the bar on his way to the street.
"Mr. Stevens!"
It was the landlord who hailed him, a man with a paunch of fine proportions, and the face of a serious cherub. Anthony stopped.
"Last night," said the host solemnly, "you engaged in an altercation. I do not know the merits of the case, sir, but Mr. Tarrant will, I think, send some one during the day to meet you."
"Is Mr. Tarrant the gentleman whom I was compelled to pitch out of my room?"
"He claims that you mishandled him; but just how or why he did not say. Should he," and the landlord's cherubic countenance was filled with interest, "send a friend to converse with you, and you should chance to be out, what report am I to give of you?"
"None," said Anthony curtly. "I am not at the beck and call of Mr. Tarrant, or any of his friends."
"He has a rare eye at forty paces," said the host, with a nod. "A very rare eye. They say there was no better shot in the navy than he, at that distance."
But Anthony did not pause to make reply; out he went and down Chestnut Street at a clipping pace. There was to be no more vague talk; he'd had enough of that the day before; there were to be no more hintings, no more warnings without body enough behind them for a man to grasp. He would have plain speech, now; and short speech, or he'd know the reason why!
The hour was rather earlier than the hour he had started out on the morning before. There was no such hurrying of drays and porters as then; Water Street was stirring slightly, but the river front was still sluggish with sleep, and the deep sea ships in the docks and the stream were as silent as though deserted. He had no idea that Magruder would be in his place of business at this hour, but impatience would not permit him to wait; if he found the place closed, he could tramp about the docks, and return at an hour that promised better.
The shutters were still up at the windows that faced the wharves, and the heavy door was fast. Anthony, however, recalled that the trader had his counting-room at the back, with its windows opening upon an alley; and he made his way around the building on the chance that it was by a door on this side that Magruder usually entered. Here, too, the shutters were up; there was the door, as he expected, and it was standing slightly ajar.
Evidently Magruder, or a clerk, had just arrived, and had not yet time to let daylight into the place. Anthony shoved the door farther open and went in. He found himself in a sort of anteroom, cluttered with nail kegs, bits of plank and cordage, and all the rubbish and refuse of shipping; there was a dark passage that he felt led to the wareroom through which he had passed on the previous day; almost at his hand was a door leading into the counting-room. He lifted the latch of this, and it opened readily; the place was dark save for here and there a gray dart of day that came in at the chinks in the shutters.
"Hello!" Anthony spoke loudly, so that his voice might also carry down through the passage into the other parts of the building. "Magruder! Are you here?"
But there was no reply. He then rapped with his stick upon the floor, but no one came in answer. Making his way through the passage, he came to the wareroom, dark, heavy smelling, and with rats scuttling about; again he called, but still received no reply. Back at the counting-room door, he looked in; by this time his eyes had grown more used to the dimness, and he began to make things out. There was the cupboard bulging with papers; there was the high desk where Magruder had stood when he first saw him. There must be a pewter candle-stick upon one end of this; Anthony had noted it the day before because the candle end had guttered so, and trailing down the metal holder was the "ghost's shrowd" held by believers in omens to be a sign of peculiar portent.
Anthony felt for this and found it; with his fusee he struck a light, and in a moment had the candle stump burning with a long flame. His shadow danced hugely upon the wall as he turned to look about; and it was then that he saw Magruder, sitting in a chair, hunched in a horridly crooked way, his mouth open in a frozen cry, great clots of blood darkening his neck-cloth, and dead!