From the Housetops

by George Barr McCutcheon

"I'll be home in half-an-hour, Baffly."

Simmy called up Anne Thorpe at once and reported that George had been found and was now in his rooms. He would call up later on. She was not to worry,—and good-bye!

It appears that George Tresslyn had been missing from the house near Washington Square since seven o'clock on the previous evening. At that hour he left his bed, to which Dr. Bates had ordered him, and made off in the cold, sleety night, delirious with the fierce fever that was consuming him. As soon as his plight was discovered, Anne called up Simmy Dodge and begged him to go out in search of her sick, and now irresponsible brother. In his delirium, George repeatedly had muttered threats against Braden Thorpe for the cruel and inhuman "slashing of the most beautiful, the most perfect body in all the world," "marking for life the sweetest girl that God ever let live"; and that he would have to account to him for "the dirty work he had done."

Acting on this hint, Simmy at once looked up Braden Thorpe and put him on his guard. Thorpe laughed at his fears, and promptly joined in the search for the sick man. They thought of Lutie, of course, and hurried to her small apartment. She was not at home. Her maidservant said that she did not know where she could be found. Mrs. Tresslyn had gone out alone at half-past seven, to dine with friends, but had left no instructions,—a most unusual omission, according to the young woman.

It was a raw, gusty night. A fine, penetrating sleet cut the face, and the sharp wind drove straight to the marrow of the most warmly clad. Tresslyn was wandering about the streets, witless yet dominated by a great purpose, racked with pain and blind with fever, insufficiently protected against the gale that met his big body as he trudged doggedly into it in quest of—what? He had left Anne's home without overcoat, gloves or muffler. His fever-struck brain was filled with a resolve that deprived him of all regard for personal comfort or safety. He was out in the storm, looking for some one, and whether love or hate was in his heart, no man could tell.

All night long Dodge and Thorpe looked for him, aided in their search by three or four private detectives who were put on the case at midnight. At one o'clock the two friends reappeared at Lutie's apartment, summoned there by the detective who had been left on guard with instructions to notify them when she returned.

It was from the miserable, conscience-stricken Lutie that they had an account of George's adventures earlier in the night. White-faced, scared and despairing, she poured out her unhappy tale of triumph over love and pity. The thing that she had longed for, though secretly dreaded, had finally come to pass. She had seen her former husband in the gutter, degraded, besotted, thoroughly reduced to the level from which nothing save her own loyal, loving efforts could lift him. She had dreamed of a complete conquest of caste, and the remaking of a man. She had dreamed of the day when she could pick up from the discarded of humanity this splendid, misused bit of rubbish and in triumph claim it as her own, to revive, to rebuild, to make over through the sure and simple processes of love! This had been Lutie Tresslyn's notion of revenge!

She saw George at eight o'clock that night. As she stood in the shelter of the small canvas awning protecting the entrance to the building in which she lived, waiting for the taxi to pull up, her eyes searched the swirling shadows up and down the street. She never failed to look for the distant and usually indistinct figure of her man. It had become a habit with her. The chauffeur had got down to crank his machine, and there was promise of a no inconsiderable delay in getting the cold engine started. She was on the point of returning to the shelter of the hallway, when she caught sight of a tall, shambling figure crossing the street obliquely, and at once recognised George Tresslyn. He was staggering. The light from the entrance revealed his white, convulsed face. Her heart sank. She had never seen him so drunk, so disgusting as this! The taxi-cab was twenty or thirty feet away. She would have to cross a wet, exposed space in order to reach it before George could come up with her. She realised with a quiver of alarm that it was the first time in all these months that he had ventured to approach her. It was clear that he now meant to accost her,—he might even contemplate violence! She wanted to run, but her feet refused to obey the impulse. Fascinated she watched the unsteady figure lurching toward her, and the white face growing more and more distinct and forbidding as it came out of the darkness. Suddenly she was released from the spell. Like a flash she darted toward the taxi-cab. From behind came a hoarse cry.

"Lutie! For God's sake—"

"Quick!" she cried out to the driver. "Open the door! Be quick!"