I
But the cab was there; and within it the girl was waiting for him.
The driver, after taking up his fare, had at her direction drawn over to the further curb, out of the fringe of the rabble which besieged the St. Luke Building in constantly growing numbers, and through which Maitland, too impatient to think of leaving by the basement exit, had elbowed and fought his way in an agony of apprehension that brooked no hindrance, heeded no difficulty.
He dashed round the corner, stopped short with a sinking heart, then as the cabby's signaling whip across the street caught his eye, fairly hurled himself to the other curb, pausing at the wheel, breathless, lifted out of himself with joy to find her faithful in this ultimate instance.
She was recovering, whose high spirit and recuperative powers were to him then and always remained a marvelous thing; and she was bending forth from the body of the hansom to welcome him with a smile that in a twinkling made radiant the world to him who stood in a gloomy side street of New York at three o'clock of a summer's morning,—a good hour and a half before the dawn. For up there in the tower of the sky-scraper he had as much as told her of his love; and she had waited; and now—and now he had been blind indeed had he failed to read the promise in her eyes. Weary she was and spent and overwrought; but there is no tonic in all the world like the consciousness that where one has placed one's love, there love has burgeoned in response. And despite all that she had suffered and endured, the happiness that ran like soft fire in her Veins, wrapping her being with its beneficent rapture, had deepened the color in her cheeks and heightened the glamour in her eyes.
And he stood and stared, knowing that in all time to no man had ever woman seemed more lovely than this girl to him: a knowledge that robbed his mind of all other thought and his tongue of words, so that to her fell the task of rousing him.
"Please," she said gently—"please tell the cabby to take me home, Mr.
Maitland."
He came to and in confusion stammered: Yes, he would. And he climbed up on the step with no other thought than to seat himself at her side and drive away for ever. But this time the cabby brought him to his senses, forcing him to remember that some measure of coherence was demanded even of a man in love.
"Where to, sir?"
"Eh, what? Oh!" And bending to the girl: "Home, you said—?"
She told him the address,—a number on Park Avenue, above Thirty-fourth Street, below Forty-second. He repeated it mechanically, unaware that it would remain stamped for ever on his memory, indelibly,—the first personal detail that she had granted him: the first barrier down.
He sat down. The cab began to move, and halted again. A face appeared at the apron,—Hickey's, red and moon-like and not lacking in complacency: for the man counted of profiting variously by this night's work.
"Excuse me, Mr. Maitland, 'nd"—touching the rim of his derby—"yeh, too, ma'am, f'r buttin' in—"
"Hickey!" demanded Maitland suddenly, in a tone of smoldering wrath, "what the—what do you want?"
"Yeh told me tuh call round to-morrow, yeh know. When'll yeh be in?"
"I'll leave a note for you with O'Hagan. Is that all?"
"Yep—that is, there's somethin' else…."
"Well?"
"Excuse me for mentionin' it, but I didn't know—it ain't generally known, yeh know, 'nd one uh th' boys might've heard me speak tuh yer lady by name 'nd might pass it on to a reporter. What I mean's this," hastily, as the Maitland temper showed dangerous indications of going into active eruption: "I s'pose yeh don't want me tuh mention't yeh're married, jes' yet? Mrs. Maitland here," with a nod to her, "didn't seem tuh take kindly tuh the notion of it's bein' known—"
"Hickey!"
"Ah, excuse me!"
"Drive on, cabby—instantly! Do you hear?"
Hickey backed suddenly away and the cab sprang into motion; while
Maitland with a face of fire sat back and raged and wondered.
Across Broadway toward Fourth Avenue dashed the hansom; and from the curb-line Hickey watched it with a humorous light in his dull eyes. Indeed, the detective seemed in extraordinary conceit with himself. He chewed with unaccustomed emotion upon his cold cigar, scratched his cheek, and chuckled; and, chuckling, pulled his hat well down over his brows, thrust both hands into his trousers pockets, and shambled back to the St. Luke Building—his heavy body vibrating amazingly with his secret mirth.
And so, shuffling sluggishly, he merges into the shadows, into the mob that surges about the building, and passes from these pages.