CHAPTER EIGHT
AS the clock struck ten the next morning, Caruth, with Tom Wilkins at his heels, stepped from the elevator in the Chimneystack Building and walked to the great entrance. Just as he reached it a red automobile drew up at the curb. Caruth motioned Wilkins into it, and jumped in behind him; and before he had time even to take his seat the machine was off. Caruth, glancing back expectantly, was somewhat surprised to see that his hasty departure had apparently roused no interest. The spies in attendance, if spies there were, either did not care to follow or recognized the hopelessness of attempting to do so.
After racing northward for several blocks, the motor turned into a side street, ran east past two or three streets, and, once more turning, sped downtown, finally stopping at the ladies’ entrance of one of the big Broadway hotels.
Caruth laughed to himself as he got out. Anything less like the mysterious Nihilistic rendezvous at which he had expected to land could scarcely be conceived. Still less excitement remained in the venture when, after sending up his card by a very matter-of-fact bell-boy, the two were shown into a parlor and allowed to wait for a very characteristically feminine interval.
If the plainsman felt out of place in surroundings which must have been wholly new to him, at least he did not show it. His face was as expressionless as a poker player’s, and he carried himself as if he owned the place, seemingly unconscious of his ill-fitting, ready-made clothing, and of the heavy boots that clattered loudly on the polished floors.
Caruth had told him little as to the object of their visit, merely saying that the lady on whom they were to call had something to say that might throw light on the object of his search. Wilkins had asked no questions. His small, furtive eyes had rested for a moment on the younger man’s face, and then he had nodded. “I’m your potato,” he remarked.
Miss Fitzhugh kept the two waiting for a time which seemed long to the plainsman, unused as he was to the intricacies of the feminine toilet. When she swept in at last, her appearance made both men catch their breath, Caruth not less than the unsophisticated Westerner.
Dressed entirely in black, high-throated, and with her hair arranged with severe plainness, she looked years older and more sedate than the magnificently vital creature Caruth had before seen. In her eyes lay a look of slumbering sorrow which persisted even when she smiled. Caruth, amazed, wondered what facet of her kaleidoscopic nature would manifest itself next.
But if her appearance bewildered Caruth, it absolutely overwhelmed Wilkins. He dropped his hat, stammered, and almost gasped at sight of her. When she gave him her hand, he seemed afraid to touch it.
But this phase passed. Miss Fitzhugh had a way with her—whether inborn or acquired it might be hard to guess—that was most effective in dealing with the opposite sex. Within ten minutes, Wilkins, his errand forgotten, was telling her a story of his experiences as a sheep-herder. “Yes, ma’am,” he wound up. “Muttons are all right when they’re served with mint sauce or when they’ve been cropped to furnish trouserings, but for steady company they’re about on the level of a Boston tea party. When you’ve watched ’em masticating daisies for a few spaces, you begin to yearn for something that don’t look like it had come out of a Noah’s ark.”