Cobra

by Martin Brown; Russell Holman

CHAPTER XIII

About a week later, Rodrigo had a business conference that resulted in an unexpected meeting and a pleasant adventure compensating in some measure for his ill success in thwarting the clever Elise.

He had been conferring in the studio of a mural painter named Washburn, who was doing some highly intricate work for Dorning and Son, when he happened to look at his watch and discovered it was after one o'clock in the afternoon. Neither had had lunch, and Washburn invited Rodrigo to accompany him to a luncheon gathering of the Dutch Treat Club, an organization of the most successful artists, authors and other members of the intelligentsia in New York, at the Hotel Martinique.

The luncheon was already in progress when they entered the crowded room, but they managed to find two vacant chairs at a round table of chattering men.

"Well—it's the Count himself!" came a booming voice from the chair beside Rodrigo and he stared into the welcoming face of Bill Terhune.

They had little opportunity to talk during the luncheon and the program of entertainment that followed, consisting of an ex-heavyweight champion pugilist, who offered racy reminiscences of his famous victory over John L. Sullivan, and a very ebullient Russian soprano. But Washburn left them later, and Rodrigo enjoyed a talk with his friend as they mingled with the crowds on sunshiny Fifth Avenue.

"You look great, Bill," Rodrigo said sincerely.

"Haven't touched a drop since that night with Binner and her friend," Terhune declared solemnly. "You know, that party taught me a lesson. I got home the next night and found my wife had been very seriously ill—an attack of ptomaine or something that blamed near carried her off. And I had lied to her and told her I was detained in town on business. She was feeling rotten when I phoned the lie, but she told me of course to stay. Well, it brought me to my senses, and I took the pledge then and there. You know, a fellow don't know how lucky he is to have a wife like mine till he darned near loses her. I'm the model husband from now on, old boy. Swore off my class reunion at Princeton and everything." Bill looked at his companion, a little abashed at his long, intense confession. He tried to pass it off by saying more lightly, "Say, you ought to meet my wife. Why don't you?"

"Why don't you let me then?" Rodrigo grinned in reply.

"By Jove, I will," Bill resolved. "Say—I tell you. I've got a couple of extra tickets for the Princeton-Yale commencement baseball game at Princeton Saturday. Why don't you get somebody and come along with us? You'll like it. You've never seen anything like it—all the Princeton grads parading in costume, plenty of color and jazz and all that sort of thing. Have you got a girl or somebody to take? Not Binner, of course."

So it happened that Rodrigo drove Mary Drake over to the Terhune home in East Orange the next Saturday bright and early in the morning. Bill's wife proved to be a very pretty, vivacious girl of about Mary's own age. There was a three-year-old daughter who took to Rodrigo and Mary at once and embarrassed them by asking innocently if they were married.

They started off merrily, the girls in the back seat and the men in front, and joined the long procession of blue and orange-and-black bannered cars rolling along the road out of Newark and across the New Jersey flats.

Princeton was jammed with gay throngs. All the vacant lots were dotted with reunion tents, and old and young men in Scottish Highlander costumes, sailor suits, clown suits, and all manner of outlandish rigs mingled with the plain citizens and pretty girls on Nassau Street. Having parked the car, they joined the mobs. Bill had to stop every few feet, it seemed to Rodrigo, to greet friends of his college days. Rodrigo judged that his companion must have been the most popular man who ever went to Princeton.

Bill took them to lunch at his club down Prospect Street with its close-cropped lawns and cool shade-trees. Afterward he left them momentarily to parade with his class into the athletic field, Rodrigo escorting the two girls to their seats in the crowded grandstand. It was a gorgeous panorama of color, youth and vivacity. Never had Mary Drake seemed so happy and carefree. Never had she smiled at him so gayly and intimately, Rodrigo told himself.

To make the afternoon's pleasure complete, Princeton won the ball game and the Terhune party stood up on the wooden boards and watched the mad, whirling phantasmagoria of victory-crazed undergraduates and graduates alike gyrating in dervish fashion in the age-old snake dance down there on the scene of the triumph.

They motored back at a snail's pace, forced to throttle their speed by the long lines of cars ahead of them. They stopped in Newark and had dinner at a clean little restaurant on South Broad Street. Later, Rodrigo secured his own car from Bill's garage and, with sincere expressions of thanks and farewell, left the happy Terhune family waving at them from the trim suburban lawn.

"Oh, I have loved every minute of it!" Mary exclaimed when they were alone. "Thank you a thousand times for inviting me along."

"Its been wonderful to have you," he replied. "You've added a lot to my pleasure. We'll have lots of nice little parties this summer, Mary—at the beach and other places."

Later she said, as if she had been reflecting upon it for some time, "I did not know you were acquainted with and liked quiet, homey people like the Terhunes."

And he was very glad that Bill had changed.

The summer droned by, with the requisite number of heat waves, during which the newspapers screamed in black headlines of prostrations and of hundreds of thousands sleeping on Coney Island's sands; and the compensating number of comfortable periods in between too. John Dorning showed an ever-growing inclination to spend these hot spells away from the office, idling under the willows at Millbank. In many weeks, he did not appear on Fifth Avenue more than two or three days. John was making up for the long years he had kept clerk's hours, winter and summer. For the first time in his life, he had learned how to play. He had found in Elise an interest even more confining than Dorning and Son. He was hardly happy away from her.

Rodrigo rather enjoyed the added responsibility placed upon his own shoulders. And he did not particularly mind the heat. Frequently he would bundle himself and Mary Drake, who had taken over some of the recreant John's duties and was working harder than ever, into his recently purchased roadster, late in the afternoon, and dash out of the city's glare to Long Beach for a cooling swim. They would have supper at a shore roadhouse on the return, and he would deliver her to her Brooklyn home while it was still early in the evening, remaining for a chat with Mary and her mother or going back to New York for a theatre or other engagement. Rodrigo was quite sure that Mrs. Drake, who was keen-witted in spite of her wan face and mouselike quietness, liked him and approved of his interest in Mary.

Late in August, a museum project upon which John Dorning had been working for nearly a year, abruptly came up for decision and the committee in charge requested him to come out and meet with them. Rodrigo offered himself as a substitute, but John's conscience asserted itself at last and he declared he must really make the trip in person. It was the first time Elise and he had been separated, and he did not fancy it in the least, though it would be for only three days. Nevertheless, he superintended the packing of the models of the pieces Dorning and Son had submitted, saw them shipped off, and followed them two days later.

The morning after he left, Rodrigo's telephone rang. Elise was on the wire inviting him to take her to lunch. She was at Grand Central, she said, and would meet him at twelve-thirty. Rodrigo was filled with a curious mixture of annoyance and pleasure. She had promised frankly in the presence of her husband to do this very thing. There could be no harm in it. And yet he knew that there would always be danger to him in being alone anywhere with this woman, and the danger, he had to admit, was what gave the thing its interest. He finally issued the desired invitation and met her in the lobby of the Biltmore.

She was the soul of cool loveliness and discretion as they chatted over the salad and iced tea. Her friendliness lulled to sleep the resentment he now unconsciously always erected against her.

"I called you up one afternoon lately," she offered innocently, stirring the tall, iced glass with the long glass spoon, "and they told me at the office that you had gone to Long Beach swimming. It's so stiflingly hot this afternoon. Wouldn't it be jolly to be out there?"

He admitted that it would.

"You're thinking that I am frightfully bold," she admitted. "And I am. Frightfully warm too. Won't you, for John's sake, prevent John's wife from perishing by taking her swimming? Or did your mother once warn you not to go near the water?"

She could have followed no surer course of goading him to comply with her wishes. Rodrigo flushed. His dark eyes shone. No woman had ever before told him thus bluntly that he was afraid of her. He accepted the dare. "I keep my car in a garage near here," he said rather curtly. "If you will wait a few moments in the lobby, I will pick you up, and we will spend the afternoon as you suggest."

They hardly spoke as he whipped the car in and out through the closely packed traffic of the uptown streets and the Queensboro Bridge. Once out beyond Long Island City, he pressed upon the accelerator and conversation became almost impossible. Long Beach was nearly as crowded as upon a Saturday or Sunday. It was by no means an exclusive resort. The children of the proletariat mingled with paunchy stock brokers and with actresses looking strangely old, with the artificial coloring washed off their faces by the relentless salt water.

Elsie and Rodrigo changed into rented bathing suits. Even in the makeshift outfit, she looked amazingly well, and he was quick to tell her so. She acknowledged the compliment with her slow, languid smile. "You are quite an Adonis yourself, as you probably know," she drawled, and raced him into the surf. They alternately swam and rested side by side upon the sand until dusk. Elise seemed to be content to act the witty, cheerful companion and Rodrigo dropped his guard and enjoyed himself. He had not known she could be so impersonally charming. This was the side of her varied personality that she had shown to John, that had enthralled him. Rodrigo could understand the attraction which she had for his friend now.

Rodrigo clasped his hands under his head, sprawled at full length upon the white sand and allowed thoughts of Dorning and Son and even of Mary to slip from his mind. He was oblivious of the world as he looked idly out into the tumbling surf, oblivious of Elise until she addressed a trivial, bantering remark to him. He turned lazily to face her and said, "You are a wonderful sport when you want to be, aren't you, Elise?"

"I should arise and make you a pretty courtesy if it weren't so warm," she replied with equal unconcern. And, after an interval, she added dryly, "You really fancy this stenographer-and-employer style of spending an afternoon in the great open spaces?"

He looked at her quickly, but he decided that she alluded not to Mary Drake in particular, but to the crowd in general that shared the sand with them, and he had to admit that there were many couples among them that seemed to answer her description.

"My tastes are simple," he said lightly. "The proletarian ideas of pleasures seem to appeal to me."

"I didn't know the European nobility had turned so democratic," she jibed.

"The Prince of Wales is our mentor. When on Long Island, do as the Prince does. But really, my title means very little, you know. And I am three-quarters an American by this time. I took out my first citizenship papers last week."

She protested at once, "You shouldn't have done that. It means that you renounce your title, doesn't it? Rodrigo, you shouldn't. Now I suppose you will marry some simple American girl, have a house in Westchester, and raise a brood of ruddy-faced little American urchins."

"That would be great stuff," he admitted.

"Fancy the immaculately attired Count Torriani hoeing a garden," she laughed. "But I can't fancy it—it requires too much imagination for such a warm day. Moreover, I am hungry, kind sir. Could you possibly give me a lobster dinner somewhere about here? I should love it."

He sprang up at once with an exclamation of assent. They dressed in their respective bath-houses. Later they dined slowly and satisfactorily at the Hotel Nassau and started back for New York in the sultry dusk of the summer evening. The salt tang was heavy in the air. A slight breeze was making fitful efforts to blow in toward them from the sea. Most of the day-time sojourners at Long Beach had already departed for apartment house dinners and engagements in town; the night crowd had not yet arrived. The roads were, in consequence, comparatively deserted.

They spun along in silence for half an hour or more. Then she said quietly, "You have not tried to make love to me at all, have you?"

His hand trembled slightly on the wheel and he pretended not to have heard her.

"Do you then find me less attractive than you once did, Rodrigo?" she asked.

"You are very beautiful," he said gravely, without looking at her. "But you happen now to be the wife of my best friend."

"In the suburban community in which we reside, it is considered quite au fait to flirt with one's friends' wives," she offered with simulated innocence.

"Really?" he countered. "But I am just a conventional New Yorker."

She had edged closer to him and the attraction of her presence was undeniable. But when, after several minutes, he showed no inclination to pursue the theme, she slumped into the seat away from him and said coolly, "You may drop me at my aunt's. I have an engagement with her to attend some fearful concert or other. Unless you would care to drive me all the way to Greenwich."

"I too unfortunately have an engagement," he prevaricated so quickly that she recognized it as a prevarication.

Soon they were in the congested, sprawly, factory-studded Long Island City and had joined the slow-moving line of cars headed across the Fifty-ninth Street bridge for the metropolis.

He parted with her at the residence of Mrs. Porter Palmer, saying in adieu, "I have truly enjoyed our little jaunt very much, Elise." She smiled and left him non-committedly. He thoughtfully piloted the car back to the garage.

After putting the car away, he walked back through the still sweltering streets to his apartment. A telegram rested upon the center table. It was from John Dorning and stated that unforeseen developments would keep him in Philadelphia over the week-end. Rodrigo smiled at John's probable whole-hearted annoyance at fate for forcing him to remain at the home of the pompous chairman of the library committee.

A special delivery letter, pink and delicately scented, arrived at Rodrigo's office the next afternoon.

DEAR RODRIGO:

Please come out with us for the week-end. John and I will be so delighted. Telephone me when to meet you.

ELISE.

He frowned and tore the note into bits. Undoubtedly she too had received word from John that he would not be home. Why was she still trying to involve him? He tried in vain to excuse her, to convince himself that she did not know of her husband's intended absence. He decided to ignore the invitation entirely.

John Dorning did not appear at his office until Tuesday morning. Yes, he said, he had concluded his mission satisfactorily, though he would probably have to return to Philadelphia a few weeks later to supervise the installation of the paintings and statuary involved in the deal. He discussed the matter lugubriously in Rodrigo's office.

"Of course you, being a confirmed old bachelor, can't appreciate what it means being away from your home and wife," he said half-seriously, while Rodrigo smiled indulgently. "I never was so glad to see Elise in my life." His face sobered a bit. "But tell me, Rodrigo, there is no—er—constraint of any kind between Elise and you, is there? You are the same old friends, aren't you?"

Rodrigo was on his guard instantly. "Of course. Why?"

"Nothing—only she tells me she wrote you a letter, before she got my wire that I wouldn't be home for the week-end, inviting you up, and you never even acknowledged it."

"It was caddish of me," Rodrigo replied. "I'm sorry. I'll apologize very humbly to Elise the first time I see her."

John put up a deprecating hand. "Oh, that's all right, old boy. Only I'm so anxious for you and Elise to be close friends. You don't know what a wonderful girl she really is. You know, I'm so incredibly happy that I want to share the cause of my happiness—Elise—with you as much as I can. I feel you're being cheated, sort of, because you haven't found the right girl too."

Rodrigo regarded him thoughtfully. "You are happy, aren't you? I don't believe I deserve that kind of happiness. If I did, I'd go after it. Because I really believe that I have found the right girl. Next to you, she's been the biggest help in the world to me."

"Rodrigo! That's great." John's eyes were wide with pleasure. "Who is she?"

"Mary Drake," Rodrigo said with quick intensity. "But I don't deserve a fine girl like her. I haven't the nerve to—"

John walked over, his back to the door, and put his arm upon his friend's shoulder. "Don't you think she would be the best judge of that? Have you told her that you love her?"

Rodrigo shook his head.

John continued. "But is that fair to her? Suppose she loves you—and—you know, if I'm any judge, I think probably she does."

"How could she?" Rodrigo suddenly cried emotionally. "A girl like her—all soul and sweetness. I know that love doesn't demand perfections. If I told her I loved her, I couldn't lie to her—I would have to tell her the whole truth about my past, about Rosa and Sophie and the rest. She might forgive—but she might despise me too. And I couldn't stand that, John. When I first knew I cared for her, I made up my mind to attend strictly to business and to make myself worthy of Mary. And I have. With the exception of that harmless little episode with Sophie Binner, I haven't taken my nose from the grindstone a minute. And yet I'm not the man for a girl like Mary."

"That's just egotism, Rodrigo," John said sternly. "You're setting yourself up as a sort of God over Mary's destiny as well as your own. You haven't looked at the matter from her point of view at all. You think you could be happy with her?"

"I know it—I dream of nothing else!"

"Then why don't you give her the chance to say whether or not she could be happy with you? Perhaps she dreams of nothing else too. None of us are angels. None of us are privileged to ignore any chances of happiness. It's up to each one of us, man or woman, to accept humbly, gratefully, every bit of real happiness and beauty that life sends our way."

"You're right, John," Rodrigo replied simply. He tried to turn the conversation to a lighter vein, to conceal how deeply he was moved. "You're quite a philosopher, aren't you, old man? God bless you for it. I know you think a lot of Mary, and of me, and I'm grateful." His eyes suddenly turned toward the door as he realized that a third person had stepped into the room.

A clerk was standing uneasily just over the threshold, and now said in considerable agitation, "A Mr. Rosner is here to see Mr. Dorning."

"Damn!" exclaimed John. "Send him away and tell him to come back to-morrow. I'm frightfully busy."

The clerk hesitated. "He said it was very urgent."

Dorning had turned his back toward the door and was facing Rodrigo. To his surprise, he saw the latter suddenly stare, grow tense and excited. John wheeled around as Rodrigo took a quick stride toward the door.

Rosner, without waiting for the clerk's answer, had slipped past him and into the office. And what a Rosner! Putty-pale, gaunt-cheeked, unshaven, wild-eyed!

"Thought you'd send me away, eh?" he almost screamed. "See me to-morrow, eh? Well, you'll see me now, John Dorning!"

Rodrigo quickly slammed the door shut and, turning to Rosner, whipped out, "Don't yell like a madman, Rosner. Sit down and tell us what it's all about."

"I've got nothing to do with you," Rosner cried fiercely. "It's him I got to reckon with." He pointed at John. The man was shaking all over, his eyes blazing with a strange light. "He knows! He sold me that black and ruby Huin Tsin vase—five thousand dollars. He knew I had to buy it. I had to replace it for a customer, or go out of business. He knew that."

"It was less than it was worth," John tried to explain. "And I took your note."

"I know damned well you did, damned well!" cried the hysterical Rosner. "And your father took a mortgage."

"Mr. Dorning's lawyer, Mr. Bates—Emerson Bates—is the man to see about that. Mr. Dorning doesn't handle those matters at all." Rodrigo tried to soothe the ranting Rosner. The man was ill, beside himself.

"Lawyers are paid to do as they're told!" Rosner yelled hoarsely, gasping as if his emotions would not allow him to talk. "I've been in the hospital—three months—out of my head most of the time. Yesterday they took me home. Mortgage foreclosed. Everything going at auction! My wife is sick. They—say she may die. I'm out of business, do you hear! Down and out! That's what you big men try to do, push us little fellows out, crush us, kill us! You big concerns with all your money. Cornering all the valuable stock, making us pay the price for it!" A sudden look of cruel cunning crept into his mad eyes. "But there's something your dollars can't get you now—and that's the chance to do it again!"

With a quick clutch at the pocket of his ragged coat he brought out a revolver and pointed it, with a snarl, at John. His hand held it unsteadily. He groped crazily for the trigger.

John Dorning let out an exclamation of terror. He cried, "Rodrigo!"

"Shut up!" Rodrigo cut in savagely, at the same time walking quickly, boldly up to Rosner, staring steadily into the madman's eyes.

"Stand still," cried Rosner, but his hand and his voice were wavering. He looked almost pleadingly at Rodrigo. "If you m—move again, I'll shoot."

"No, you won't," said Rodrigo calmly, clearly. "Rosner, if you pull that trigger, what will become of your wife and children?" With a stealthy, quick movement he pushed John Dorning behind him. Rosner made a half-hearted effort to resist as Rodrigo seized his wrist in a clutch of steel and knocked the gun out of the man's weak fingers. Rodrigo put the revolver in his own pocket and, the tension over, stood regarding Rosner with a look of infinite pity. Then the reaction hit the broken man with full force and, suddenly crumpling into a chair, he covered his face with his hands and his thin body was shaken with hacking, convulsive sobs.

John and Rodrigo stood looking at him in silence for a moment, and then Rodrigo said quietly, "You'd better speak to him, John."

Rosner had quieted a little now, and John put his hand upon his bent shoulder. "Don't worry, old man," he said. "I'm terribly sorry. It's a mistake all around. Dad and I would never have let this happen for the world, had we been told anything about it. Forget the vase and the mortgage—and I'll lend you anything you want to see you through."

Rosner raised a haggard, tear-swollen face. "My wife," he whispered huskily, "is sick. And they told her I—I was out of my head."

John patted Rosner's shoulder. "Well, you're all right now, aren't you? Sure—fine."

"I'll telephone Bates, and Madison can see Rosner home and do anything necessary for his wife," Rodrigo suggested in an undertone to John.

"No, I'll go myself," John said. He helped the broken man to his feet and located his hat for him.

Dazed, but strangely sane again and hopeful, Rosner turned to John and said in an awed, puzzled voice, "I meant—to shoot." And, indicating Rodrigo, "It was him that stopped me. Oh, thank God!—thank God!"

He allowed John to lead him out of the office and stood waiting calmly outside for a moment while John went for his own hat. Dorning darted back, a moment later, to Rodrigo. Still flushed with excitement, he held out his hand, his eyes expressing his full heart. "Rodrigo!"

Rodrigo took his hand. "We think we've got our problems, but they don't amount to a thing, do they?—not a thing," he said thoughtfully.

"It's my life—that I owe—" John began.

But Rodrigo stopped him. "Forget it," he advised. "Nobody knows what happened, and nobody needs to. There's just one thing I want you to promise—I want you to agree that we give Rosner a job here when he's fit to work again."

John smiled. "I was thinking of the same thing myself. I'll tell him about it on the way to his home."

"I DARE YOU TO KISS ME—AND LET ME GO?" ELISE BREATHED.