His spirit balked. His imagination could work no further. Horror staggered him. A mother who knows that her child is in the hands of kidnappers who will have no mercy might feel something like the despair and helplessness which sent him chafing and champing up and down the suite of rooms, cursing himself uselessly.
Suddenly he paused. He was in front of the cabinet which had come via Bordentown from Queen Caroline Murat. Behind its closed door there was still the bottle on the label of which a kilted Highlander 304 was dancing. He must have a refuge from his thoughts, or else he would go mad. He was already as near madness as a man could come and still be reckoned sane.
He opened the door of the cabinet. The bottle and the glass stood exactly where he had placed them on that morning when he had tried to begin going to the devil, and had failed. Now there was no longer that same mysterious restraint. He was not thinking of the devil; he was thinking only of himself. He must still the working of his mind. Anything would do that would drug his faculties, and so....
It was after midnight when he dragged himself out of a stupor which had not been sleep. Being stupor, however, it was that much to the good. He had stopped thinking. He couldn’t think. His head didn’t ache; it was merely sore. He might have been dashing it against the wall, as figuratively he had done. His body was sore too—stiff from long sitting in the same posture, and bruised as if from beating. All that was nothing, however, since misery only stunned him. To be stunned was what he had been working for.
Out in the air the wind of the May night was comforting. It soothed his nerves without waking the dormant brain. Instead of looking for a taxi he began walking up the Avenue. Walking too was a relief. It allowed him to remain as stupefied as at first, and yet stirred the circulation in his limbs. He meant to walk till he grew tired, after which he would jump on an electric bus.
But he did not grow tired. He passed the great 305 milestones, Fourteenth Street, Twenty-third Street, Forty-second Street, Fifty-ninth Street, and not till crossing the last did he begin to feel fagged. He was then so near home that the impulse of doggedness kept him on foot. He was a strong walker, and physically in good condition, without being wholly robust. Had it not been for the kilted Highlander he would hardly have felt fatigue; but as it was, the corner of East Sixty-seventh Street found him as spent as he cared to be.
Advancing toward his door he saw a man coming in the other direction. There was nothing in that, and he would scarcely have noticed him, only for the fact that at this hour of the night pedestrians in the quarter were rare. In addition to that the man, having reached the foot of Allerton’s own steps, stood there waiting, as if with intention.
Through the obscurity Rash could see only that the man was well built, flashily dressed, and that he wore a sweeping mustache. In his manner of standing and waiting there was something significant and menacing. Arrived at the foot of the steps Allerton could do no less than pause to ask if the stranger was looking for anyone.
“Is your name Allerton?”
“Yes; it is.”