Cobra

by Martin Brown; Russell Holman

CHAPTER XI

Rodrigo attended a private auction of Flemish art the next morning and did not reach the office until noon-time. Having glanced through his mail, he thrust his head into John's office to tell him of the purchases he had made. He was quite well pleased with himself and was looking forward to Dorning's commendation on his bargains. Mary Drake was alone in the office.

"Good-morning, Mary," called Rodrigo. "Has John gone to lunch already?"

He saw with a little uneasiness that something of the usual warmth with which she greeted him had fled from her eyes and voice. "Yes, he is lunching with a Miss Van Zile at the Plaza."

Rodrigo frowned. His high spirits were somewhat quenched. He entered and walked over toward Mary and sat down. He looked at her a moment, hesitated, then said abruptly, "Mary, if your best girl friend was attracted to a chap who you knew was no good, what would you do about it?"

She regarded him seriously and said rather pertly, "I would make very sure first that my opinion of the man's unworthiness was correct."

"And if you had made sure—then what?"

She gave a little helpless gesture. She was so serious that he was on the point of asking her what was troubling her. "How can you make sure?" she asked gravely. And went on, "I used to think that first impressions of people were instinctively the right ones. That everything after that just had the effect of clouding things, of leading to wrong judgments. Recently I changed my mind. I decided that what a person has been in the past has nothing to do with the present. I thought people could change, could find themselves, and become new men—or women. Now—I don't know."

He tried to take her delicate, white hand, but it eluded his. "Mary," he asked softly, "are you thinking of me when you say these things about—first opinions?"

He took her troubled silence for an affirmation.

"Has someone been talking to you since about me?" he queried intuitively.

Mary, who was never one for groping about in the dark, replied, "A girl by the name of Sophie Binner was in this morning. She asked for you. When she found you weren't here, she grew quite loud and troublesome, and Mr. Madison referred her to John. I couldn't help but hear some of the conversation between them, though I left when I discovered its private nature."

"Sophie Binner?" he repeated, screwing his forehead into a frown. "But I haven't seen her for several months. She is an actress I knew in England—and, for a short time, here. But she has been on the road with her company, and I haven't even written to her."

"You must have written to her some time or other."

"Why, what do you mean, Mary?" He had never seen the usually calm and capable Mary agitated so. It agitated him in turn. Sophie was not above making trouble, he knew, especially after the unfriendly manner of their last parting.

"I don't want you to question me any further, Rodrigo," said Mary nervously. "I have told you quite all I know. You will have to get the rest from John. Probably he won't mention it to you. He hates trouble of all kinds—particularly sordid troubles—and he will be anxious to shield you. And I think you shouldn't allow yourself to be shielded, in this case."

"Certainly not. I'll ask him what happened at once."

But Rodrigo did not have the opportunity to broach the subject of Sophie to his partner during the remainder of the day. John did not return from his luncheon engagement until after three, when he hurried in breezily, a carnation in his buttonhole and a flush upon his face that caused the employees out in the gallery to look significantly at each other and smile approvingly. The head of the concern had never looked so happy. John closeted himself at once with a couple of art buyers who acted in the capacity of scouts for Dorning and Son. By the time Rodrigo judged Dorning was free and went in search of him, John had again disappeared, this time, Mary said, to dress for dinner.

Rodrigo found John in their apartment, arrayed in his evening clothes, administering the final touches to his necktie. The Italian told himself a little ironically that Elise Van Zile had reversed the social order of the day in their lodgings—now it was John who was donning festive attire almost every evening and setting out upon social expeditions, and Rodrigo who was left home to settle in a chair with a book. Formerly it had been the reverse. Rodrigo remarked banteringly about this.

"But I have such a wonderful reason for deserting you," John cried. "How she ever happened to decide to like me, when you were available, Rodrigo, I don't know. She is such a beautiful creature—she could have the pick of all the men in the world. And she's just as sweet as she is beautiful. You don't think that I deliberately went out to oust you from her affections, do you, Rodrigo?" John spoke so earnestly that Rodrigo gave a short laugh of reassurance. But there was a note of anxious pity in it also. Poor old John.

"I understand that you saw another friend of mine to-day, also," Rodrigo said, lighting a cigarette and flicking the match into the open grate.

John dropped his thin fingers from his tie and replied quietly. "Did Mary tell you? I asked her not to."

"She evidently thought it better that I should know, and I think she is right, as usual. What did Sophie Binner want of me—and you?"

John walked over to his friend and put his hands upon Rodrigo's shoulders. He suggested, "Please don't ask me any more about her, Rodrigo. You'll never see or hear from her again. Why not let it go at that?"

Rodrigo replied impatiently, "I'm not a baby, John, I know more about women like Sophie than you do. What was she up to?"

John shrugged his shoulders and decided to make a clean breast. "She looked like the devil—thin and badly dressed. She said her show had failed, left the whole company stranded out in Pocatello, Idaho. Christy and the company manager skipped and went back to England. Sophie pawned her jewels and clothes and just scraped together enough money to get her to New York. So she came to you for help."

Rodrigo relaxed with relief. "Fair enough," he admitted. "I'll stake her to a trip home. Why didn't you tell her to go away and come back again when I was there?"

John hesitated. "She insisted upon some money at once. She had—some letters from you. I read a couple of them, and they were really pretty serious stuff, Rodrigo. You were never a calm letter-writer. And writing letters to a certain type of woman is very had business in this country. There are always shyster lawyers around ready to pounce upon them and turn them into money. And she said—well, that you were in her apartment the night her show opened. She mentioned a colored elevator man whom she could summon as a witness, if necessary. But, damn it, I don't believe you were, Rodrigo." John looked at his friend anxiously.

"I was just there for a minute, and it was perfectly harmless," Rodrigo said at once. "It didn't mean a thing and she probably played it up merely to give me a black eye with you. As a matter of fact, I recall that the elevator boy did ride us up and wasn't there when I came down the stairs later. I had a fearful row with her and she's probably out for revenge. But what's Sophie's game anyway—blackmail? She can't get away with it."

John replied, "She threatened to sue you for breach of promise to marry her, said you had jilted her in London once before. She wanted five thousand dollars to call it off. I knew she didn't have a case, but I thought it was just as well to keep her quiet. So I gave her two thousand dollars. Then I stopped in at the apartment house address she gave me and for a fifty dollar bill persuaded the colored elevator boy that you had never been there."

Rodrigo shook his head and smiled. Was there ever a friend like this innocent-wise John Dorning?

"You're a prince, John," Rodrigo said sincerely. "But you shouldn't have done it. You should have let me face the music." He turned almost fiercely and paced the floor a moment. Returning, he faced John and cried, "I don't know why you have such a sublime faith in me, John. God knows I've given you no reason for it. I was in trouble when you first met me. And that wasn't the first time, as you must have known. And yet you accepted me as a friend and you gave me a start that's resulted in the happiest time of my life. Now, damn it, I throw you down again. I guess I'm just bad."

John laid his hand on the Italian's shoulder. "No, I won't have you condemning yourself. You've been strictly business since you've been over here, I know. This Binner affair is a carry-over from the past. Your letters didn't mean anything, even though they sounded pretty intimate. And that episode in her apartment was just a peculiar combination of circumstances, I can see that."

"Oh, don't make me out a saint, John," Rodrigo cried impatiently. "If those crooks in the hall hadn't jolted it out of my head—oh, well, what's the use. Once a weakling, always a weakling."

"Not at all," John retorted. "I'll admit there's one kink in your character I don't understand. I don't see why a chap who is as unselfish, straightforward and worldly wise as you are, can—well, make a fool out of himself with a certain type of woman. It's uncanny."

"It's in my blood. I'll never be able to be absolutely sure of myself," Rodrigo flung out hopelessly. His hands were nervously fingering the table against which he was leaning. He was thinking neither of Sophie nor of Rodrigo. He was seeing the white, disappointed face of Mary Drake, and he knew now what had been troubling her. It did not occur to him to be thrilled that she should care enough about him to be troubled. He was afraid, afraid for his love and his happiness, because he was his own worst enemy. His nervous, groping fingers closed upon a marble figurine, an exquisite carving of a hooded cobra, head raised and ready to strike at a tiger. The tiger, about to spring, had paused and stood, eyes upon the snake, as if fascinated. It was among his art treasures that he had brought from Italy.

"You'll be sure of yourself," John was saying, "when the right girl comes along." He smiled, and Rodrigo realized with a pang that John was thinking of his right girl, Elise Van Zile.

"What chance will I ever have with the right sort of girl when the wrong sort may come along first?" And Rodrigo too was thinking of Elise. He suddenly realized that his fingers were digging into something hard until they hurt. He looked down at the figurine, and lifted it.

"Here I am!" he cried. "I'm this tiger! I never told you why I brought this figurine with me, why I've always cherished it, have I? Well, one reason is because my father gave it to me when I was a boy as the memento of a very exciting afternoon. It happened in India when I was about fourteen years old. We were riding on an elephant, and we could see over a high wall into a sort of a lane that led to an enclosure where a chap who used to make a business of capturing wild animals for museums and circuses kept his stock. He let the beasts roam around in there, and my father would take me to the other side of the wall to see them.

"Well, on this afternoon, a big, silky tiger came walking down the lane. Suddenly, when he was just about opposite us, he stopped short—like this statue—his head down. He stared at something. We followed his shining eyes. A cobra had slipped out of the box in which the chap kept his snakes. The tiger stared as if paralyzed, fascinated, a yard from the snake's head. A cobra! That's the wrong kind of a girl—a cobra. Mind you, this tiger could have killed the thing with one blow of his paw. He could have killed a lion, or scattered a regiment. Yet he stood there, his eyes held by the eyes of the cobra. All at once he tossed his head up and took a step backward—and the cobra struck."

"Struck! Did he kill the tiger?"

"I don't know. I felt sick. My father saw how white I was, and we left at once. Several months later he saw this figurine in a shop in Calcutta and bought it. He gave it to me."

John looked at him and said slowly, "Perhaps a cobra can't really kill anything as big and strong as a tiger."

"It can make it bad for him, though. I can remember Dad cursing that he didn't have a gun with him. A gun! That's you, John. When I've been walking lately, I've usually had you along, and I've been pretty safe from cobras."

"It's safer not to go walking at all."

"Well, even a tiger has to have some diversion," Rodrigo tried to lighten up the serious turn the conversation had taken. As John walked over to the mirror and resumed his adjusting of his cravat, Rodrigo said suddenly, "And guns too, John—sometimes guns don't act as they should, very good guns, too. And cobras raise the dickens with them too."

But John had hardly heard him, much less gotten the meaning of his friend's cryptic speech. And Rodrigo was instantly glad. John was so infatuated with Elise that mere words would never undeceive him. It must be something stronger than words. Likewise, Rodrigo must make very sure that Elise Van Zile was what he had described to John as the cobra type of woman.

After John left, Rodrigo sat down and tried to interest himself in a large, profusely illustrated volume on interior decoration. But he was in no mood to concentrate upon the hopelessly conventional illustrations and the dry, prosaic text. He flung the book down at length, and, lighting his pipe, walked nervously about the apartment. He was thinking of John and Elise Van Zile, and of himself. His feeling toward the sudden infatuation of his friend for Mrs. Palmer's niece and Elise's sudden interest in John contained not one atom of jealousy. Had she been the girl John thought she was, Rodrigo would have been delighted and would have rendered the match every assistance.

But Elise, Rodrigo kept telling himself, was the girl he thought she was. This business to-day of Sophie Binner, this tale of the cobra he had related to John, this whole raking up of his past had had a depressing effect upon him. The world looked awry that evening.

He confessed, after fifteen minutes of aimless walking about, that he was perhaps seeing things through a glass darkly. But of this much he was quite certain: Elise Van Zile was clever. Though John Dorning was not the type of man who appealed to her, she might decide to marry him for his money. Married or single, she would always be selfish, unscrupulous. She wanted a rich, safe husband.

If the husband were John Dorning, this would bring tragedy.

Having arrived at this conclusion, Rodrigo tried to denounce the whole thing as nonsense and, catching up his hat, departed from the apartment in search of something to eat, though he wasn't in the least hungry. He wanted to get out, get away from himself, get where there were people, noise, laughter.

He walked over to Broadway and deliberately chose a cheap restaurant where race-track touts, vaudeville and burlesque actors and actresses, theatrical agents and motion picture press agents absorb indigestible food. But the gum-chewing waitresses and clattery crockery failed to divert him. He hardly touched his food. Rising, he paid what the muscular waitress had punched on his ticket, and walked back to the apartment through the surging tide of the Broadway theatre traffic.

Back in his living-room, he settled down with his book again. But he could not read. He fell to brooding again. And out of his brooding came finally a mad plan to save John Dorning. As well have the game as the name, Rodrigo laughed ironically. He had done so many foolish things for his own pleasure. God might now forgive this last one if it were done unselfishly, to save a saint. For John Dorning was almost a saint to Rodrigo. Their friendship was a thing almost sacred. But it was better to kill even this sacred thing, Rodrigo reasoned solemnly, than to hurt John Dorning.

So the following afternoon he called Elise Van Zile on the telephone from his office and, putting into his voice all the mellow intimacy that he knew so well how to convey, he said, "I have missed you so much, Elise. John interrupted our last little chat just when it was becoming so interesting, and took you away. I'd so much more to tell you. We have such a great deal in common, as you were good enough to say. I'm wondering when I may see you again."

There was silence for a moment, and then her smooth tones came over the wire, "Why, certainly. Aunt Helen and I will be delighted to see you any time."

He lowered his accents. "Not, Auntie—you, you alone. You said you would like to come again to our apartment. And this time I will promise we won't be interrupted. Not even by John. I want so badly to see you—Elise. Won't you come?"

After a long pause, her voice came noncommittedly, "When?"

"On Saturday afternoon at three?"

Another long pause, and then she said faintly, "I shall be there."

Rodrigo hung up the receiver and took a long, deep breath. Then he walked into John's office and, taking advantage of Mary's temporary absence, said, "John, I want you to promise me something."

"What is it, old man? And why the terrifically serious look on your face?"

Rodrigo forced a smile. "I want you to stay away from the apartment until three-thirty next Saturday afternoon," he said. "At that time I want you to meet me there, and probably I'll have something very interesting to show you?"

"But my birthday isn't until next month, Rodrigo?" John bantered. "Did you go out and buy that Gainsborough original I fancied so much—or what?"

"Please don't ask any questions, John. And believe that I'm deadly serious. Three-thirty. Will you be there?"

"Why, of course—if you say so."

During the rest of the week, Rodrigo was like a man who has had the date of his electrocution set. He could not work, eat, nor sleep. John remarked about it. Mary Drake regarded him anxiously from behind his back.

At noon the following Saturday, Rodrigo heard John leaving his office and hastened to stop him. He had not reminded John of his engagement of the afternoon, but now he said,

"You haven't forgotten about coming to the apartment at three-thirty, have you, John!"

"Oh, I'll be there. You're so darned mysterious about it that you've aroused my curiosity."

Rodrigo felt a grim satisfaction. He did not purpose to have his electrocution bungled by the absence of the man who was to turn on the electricity.

Having with some awkwardness and difficulty disposed of Mrs. Brink, the housekeeper, who showed a disposition to dawdle at her work so that she might gossip with him, Rodrigo, at three o'clock that afternoon, was trying desperately to interest himself in a newspaper. He was arrayed in a purple silken dressing-gown. Soft cushions were piled invitingly upon the divan. The shades had been drawn discreetly, so that the room was in a semi-shadow. Whisky and soda stood upon a slim taboret.

He waited impatiently for fifteen minutes. Then his nerves tingled as he heard the elevator door outside roll open and someone stepped out into the corridor. An instant later the apartment bell chimed. Rodrigo gravely arose. His face broke into an excellent imitation of a smile of hearty welcome. He opened the door. A freckle-faced, gawky messenger boy grinned on the threshold, handed him two telegrams and pointed with a chewed stump of a pencil where to sign in the book.

Rodrigo, mystified and disappointed, broke the envelope of one of the telegrams. His face turned pale and his chin quivered, like a man suddenly attacked with a chill, as he read:

Congratulate me. Elise and I married at Greenwich five minutes ago. I am the happiest man in the world.

JOHN.

He walked falteringly over to the deep armchair and sat down before he had the courage to open the other yellow container.

Sorry I had to miss our engagement. Just as well perhaps. Forgive me for influencing John to break his date.

ELISE VAN ZILE.

For the first time in his life, Rodrigo cursed a lady. But mingled with his resentment against her was a frank tribute to her cleverness. For he hadn't a doubt in the world now but that Elise had seen through his stratagem and had taken this decisive step to outwit him.