IN WHICH I CAN NOT BELIEVE HALF I HEAR
We were all upon our feet, and now Reid, with a curt nod of farewell, turned away with his companion. I stepped to his other side.
"One moment," I said. "I want to know a little more about this before I drop it; and right here is as good a place as any."
"Can't just now, Crosby." He motioned me away nervously. "Not possible. See you up in the country any time, and tell you all you want. Not here," and he moved toward the door.
"You can't help yourself," said I, "and I won't keep you long. Sit down again, please." He had lugged out his watch. "You'll have to miss your train, but there are plenty more."
The giant scowled at me with obvious willingness to begin a disturbance then and there; and Reid glanced hesitatingly from the one to the other of us, his impulse printed plain upon his face.
"Certainly," I put in, "you can get rid of me in that way, for the moment, if it's worth your while. Make up your mind—you're the doctor."
He started angrily, flushing to the roots of his close-cropped hair; and I thought for an instant that I had mistaken my man. Then the melodrama oozed out of him. He dismissed the unwilling bully with a whispered word or two, and sat sullenly down across the table.
"I'll make it as short as you please," I retorted. "Carucci's wife is sent down to see that he sails. I'm sent down to see that she makes good. Now you come down and have him shanghaied. Was this your own idea, or were you—"
"No. My own initiative entirely. Only practical way of making sure that he went. Best to see to it personally. Always better to do the thing yourself, and then you know it's done."
"I understand, then, that Mr. Tabor didn't suggest this to you?"
"Exactly. Tabor knows nothing about it. My own idea altogether." His triumph in his own efficiency was overriding his annoyance. "Better say nothing to him whatever. He has enough to think of. Always best to avoid trouble. The man's gone, and there's an end to it. Is that all?"
So Reid's own fear of Carucci had been intense enough to drive him to this dirty alternative rather than trust to our sending the man safely away. There was something unnatural here.
"Not quite," I said. "Of course, you know the exact nature of the fellow's blackmailing story?"
"Certainly. Pack of lies. Won't discuss it. Utterly absurd, the whole thing, but we can't have it go any further."
"Precisely, and it won't go any further, now. What I want to know is the foundation for it. You must see the reason for my knowing that much of the facts, and for trusting me with them. If there is any entanglement—"
"Look here, Crosby," Reid leaned forward across the table, his face scarlet and working, "that'll do. I don't propose to sift over my life with you. Not for a minute. What's more, if we could afford a row, I'd punch your head for having the assurance to repeat that infernal slander to my face. That's all, you understand? That's all."
"There's plenty of time for that," I said, lowering my voice instinctively, as I felt my own temper slipping. "I'll ask you just one more question. On your word, is Miriam Tabor alive, or not?"
I never saw a man so broken by a word. He turned from red to greenish white, the perspiration shining on his forehead; and for a moment it seemed that he could not speak. Then he dragged the words out hoarsely and unnaturally.
"You've taken a damned cowardly advantage—Miriam Tabor was my wife, and she's dead. Now are you satisfied? Because I'm not."
There was nothing to add. I rose in silence, and we made our way to the door. On the sidewalk, he waited for me to choose my direction; then without a word, turned pointedly in the opposite one, and walked quickly away.
I set out for the Carucci tenement in a state of no great comfort. By forcing a scene I had gained nothing; and I had made an overt enemy of Doctor Reid. Not that I was particularly concerned over that development; I had never liked the man from the first; and I was impressed not so much by what he had said as by his open and disproportionate confusion. Think what I might of my own side of the affair, Reid had confessed to a personal concern with Carucci; he had flown into a rage upon my asking for an explanation; and the name of Miriam had stricken him like a blow. He had told me nothing, after all, and had made me the more anxious over what he refused to tell. If he had been absolutely in the right, I had done nothing worse than to touch upon a grief brutally; and he would have said precisely what he did say if I had been justified and he had been lying. Well, Carucci was out of reach, and Reid worse than silenced. What chance remained to me of an answer to my problem depended upon Sheila.
I had no time to doubt if I should find her; for her window was lighted up, and she herself plainly to be seen, leaning far out to watch the street below as I turned the corner. When I was still half way up the block, she called to me by name, bidding me come up at once; and I answered as I picked my way along, trying to reassure her. The scene for a moment resembled a ludicrous burlesque of a serenade; nor did the street miss anything of its humor. With one accord the women in the doorways, the lounging men about the lamps and the scurrying screaming groups of youngsters underfoot caught up the implication, and began a babel of jocose advice and criticism in a dozen languages. And although I understood but little of it, and was somewhat preoccupied with graver matters, yet I was fain to dive hurriedly into the doorway with a heated and tingling countenance. The little room was itself again, save for a dull spot upon the clean-scrubbed boards; and the canary in the window paused in a burst of singing as I entered.
"Sheila," I said, "I am very much afraid you won't like my news."
"Well, sir, what's happened him?" she asked briefly.
"You're right," I answered. "It's your husband, but it's nothing to be alarmed about, nothing at all dangerous. You must—"
"For the love av God, don't thry to break things to me, sir. Speak right out. He's not hurt, ye say; well, he's pinched then, I suppose."
"No, it's not the police. He's been shanghaied, if you know what that means."
"Crimped? It's thrue for ye, I know; 'tis twice before he's been, but who done it I never could tell. Av I thought anny av my folk that's afraid av his silly tongue wud do that dhirty thrick—" she stopped short, her strong face working.
I was rather angry myself. "Well, Sheila, I don't believe they had anything to do with it before; but it was Doctor Reid who had it done to-day. I was there, but it was over before I understood what was going on."
"Reid? I shud ha' known 'twas Reid, the shamblin' scun he is, an' small good them that loved him best ever had av him! Now, the divil hould his dhirty little pinch av a soul! For why shud he harm my man?"
"That's what I want to know," I said. "He's afraid of what Antonio says about him, and you know—"
"As far as his story ever goes it'll harm no man," she burst out, "they know well he's all bark an' no bite, if they weren't all crazy-afraid together, an' a truer man anny day than that blagyard body-snatchin' pill-roller. His own guilty heart it is, whisperin' over his shoulder, an' me poor lamb that he married an' murthered, and the child av his own body on the one day! An' the poor mother they're callin' crazy, with the soul av the daughter she cudn't let free standin' between her an' the sunshine. Crazy she'll never be until they make her so, with their doctors an' questions an' whispers, an' that death-fetch Reid grinnin' before her face, with the blood not dhry on him!" She paused for breath, walking up and down the room and twisting her hands.
"Sit down, Sheila," I said, "you know this is absurd. I'm trying to get a little truth about people we both care for; and if you say things like that, how can you expect me to believe anything?" But my knees were trembling as I spoke.
"Mudhered it was all the same," she said sullenly, dropping back into a chair nevertheless. "When a docthor with all the learnin' that goes beyond the knowledge av a woman lets his wife die an' an innocent mite av a new-born baby go down to the grave with her, 'tis black murder it is, no less. How could she rest quiet after that, an' half her life callin' to her, an' the mother that wouldn't let her go, an' had the power to see? 'Tis no docthor she wants, but a priest, an' no medicine but a handful av holy wather, like my own sister's cousin Nora that used to sit an' talk with her lad that was dead evenin's by the byre wall, an' Father Tracy came behind an' sprinkled the two av thim, the one he could see an' the one he could not see."
"Who was it that died?" I asked sharply. "Was it Miriam? Did Reid lie to me when he said so, or did Carucci lie when he said that Reid was married to Lady?"
She grew suddenly quiet and cautious, as if she had said too much already, and must weigh her words.
"Reid told ye the truth for once," she muttered. "'Twas Antonio lied."
"Then Miriam was his wife, and Lady—"
"Yes," she answered, "it was Miriam," but she did not meet my eyes. Then she went on hastily, before I could speak again.
"Ye see, sir, 'twas like this: When Miriam died, her mother's heart nearly went with her, an' so because the poor dear loved her more than enough, she did not go quite away. 'Tis so some whiles, when the livin' holds too close by the dead. She used to talk to her, an' when the villain that let her die got doctors an' looked like judgment, an' said my poor soul was wrong in her head, an' ought to be taken away, an' they moved her out there in the counthry where they had no friends, an' kept her hidden as if there was a shame upon her, sure the lovin' soul of the dead girl followed her mother. They said she was crazy when she made them move her daughter's room, an' keep it up in the new house as it had been in the old, an' would sit an' talk to her there. Sure, 'twas no sign at all, an' a black lie in Reid's black heart to set the husband an' the daughter again' her. Some folks are that way, that can see the fairy folk an' the goblins, an' speak with the wandherin' dead. A good priest Mrs. Tabor should have when the power tires her, an' not a lyin' schemin' brute av a docthor that wants to put her away. 'Twas not much at first anyhow. But he turned their heads with his talk av asylums an' horrors to lead them away from his own wickedness."
"Is that the secret, then?" I asked. "Is the trouble no more than their fear that Mrs. Tabor is insane?"
"Secret? What secret? There's no secret they have at all, only a wicked lie." She was growing careful again. "'Tis all that docthor that's never happy but doin' harm. She's no more crazy than meself, an' no one thinks nor fears it, not even him. They only say so, because—" She stopped herself again.
"Sheila," I said, "tell me just one thing. How much truth is there in what your husband says?"
"How do I know what he says?" She was watching me closely, as if to see that I followed her words. "He's dhrunk half the time, poor divil, an' he says one thing to-day an' one to-morrow. Never ye mind him, sir."
"But there must have been something for him to go on," I persisted. "Did Reid have some affair abroad before his marriage, or not?"
She hesitated, her apparent hatred of Reid struggling with her loyalty to the family and her recovered caution.
"There was some matther av a woman in Germany," she said at last, reluctantly, "but I never rightly knew about it, nor Antonio either." Then more rapidly: "An' it's angry I've been, Mr. Crosby, an' 'tis like I've said more meself than I mean." She paused.
"Has that nothing to do with the trouble in the family? Sheila, you know I'm their good friend, and I'm not merely gossiping. You must have seen—" for the life of me I could not go on.
"I'll say no more," she answered obstinately. "It's weary I am for you, an' the poor darlin' that's bewitched ye, but—" her eyes filled, and she shut her mouth with a snap. Say what I would after that, I could not move her. She had said enough already, and she trusted a gentleman like me that it should go no further. That was all.
"Sheila," I said, as I rose to go, "is all you have told me true?"
"Thrue?" she started as if I had struck her. "Yes, it's thrue—an' sorrow fell them that made it so."
I took up my hat and stick from the table.
"We will have another talk about this some day, Sheila," I said. And I closed the door behind me.