CHAPTER THIRTEEN—TRAPPINGS OF TINSEL
UNDER the shaded light on his table, in his private sitting room in the Bayne-Miloy Hotel, John Bruce had been writing steadily for half an hour—but the sheets of paper over which his pen had traveled freely and swiftly were virgin white. He paused now, remained a moment in thought, and then added a line to the last sheet. No mark was left, but from the movement of the pen this appeared to be a signature.
He gathered the sheets together, folded them neatly, and slipped them into an envelope. He replaced the cap on the fountain pen he had been using, placed the pen in his vest pocket, and from another pocket took out another pen that was apparently identical with the first. With this second pen, in black ink, he addressed the envelope to one Gilbert Larmon in San Francisco. He sealed the envelope, stamped it, put it in his pocket, returned the second fountain pen to his vest pocket, lighted a cigarette leaned back in his chair, and frowned at the ascending spirals of smoke from the cigarette's tip.
The report which he had just written to Larmon, explaining his inaction during the past weeks, had been an effort—not physical, but mental. He had somehow, curiously, felt no personal regret for the enforced absence from his “work,” and he now felt no enthusiasm at the prospect of resuming it. He had had no right to tinge or color his letter to Larmon with these views; nor had he intended to do so. Perhaps he had not; perhaps he had. He did not know. The ink originated by the old Samoan Islander had its disadvantages as well as its advantages. He could not now read the letter over once it was written!
He flicked the ash irritably from his cigarette. He had been back here in the hotel now for two days and that feeling had been constantly growing upon him. Why? He did not know except that the cause seemed to insist on associating itself with his recent illness, his life in the one-time pawn-shop of Paul Veniza. But, logically, that did not hold water. Why should it? He had met a pawnbroker who roamed the streets at night in a fantastic motor car, driven by a drunkard; and he had fallen in love with a girl who was glad she was going to marry a dope-eating criminal. Good God, it was a spectacle to make——
John Bruce's fist crashed suddenly down on the desk beside him, and he rose from his chair and stood there staring unseeingly before him. That was not fair! What was uppermost now was the recrudescence of the bitterness that had possessed him two nights ago when he had returned from Paul Veniza's to the hotel here. Nor was it any more true than it was fair! What of the days and nights of nursing, of care, of the ungrudging and kindly hospitality they had given to an utter stranger? Yes, he knew! Only—only she had said she was glad!
He began to pace the room. He had left Veniza's in bitterness. He had not seen Claire. It was a strange sort of love he boasted, little of unselfishness in it, much of impatience, and still more of intolerance! That it was a hopeless love in so far as he was concerned did not place him before himself in any better light. If he cared for her, if there was any depth of feeling in this love he claimed to have, then at least her happiness, her welfare and her future could not be extraneous and indifferent considerations to him. And on the spur of the moment, piqued, in spite of Paul Veniza's protestations, he had left that night without seeing Claire again!
He had been ashamed of himself. Yesterday, he had telephoned Claire. He had begged her forgiveness. He had not meant to say more—but he had! Something in her voice had—no, not invited; he could not say that—but had brought the passion, pleading almost, back into his own. It had seemed to him that she was in tears at the other end of the wire; at least, bravely as she had evidently tried to do so, she had been unable to keep her voice under control. But she had evaded an answer. There had been nothing to forgive, she had said. He had told her that he must see her, that he would see her again. And then almost hysterically, over and over again, she had begged him to attempt nothing of the sort, but instead to leave New York because she insisted that it was not safe for him to stay even in the city.