"When I get back." Sevier lifted a book from the table. "Take this to Mr. Treadwell's—his house, not his office—you understand. There's no message; it belongs to him. Don't wait; go at once."
When he had closed the outer door on the valet, Harry drew a long breath. He opened another door and listened. He could hear Aunt Judy rattling crockery in the kitchen, humming as she laboured. He would be undisturbed, the coast was clear. His veins were beating hot now with the brandy, and the sickness was gone. In the old days the reaction had been slow and grudging. But during the year his body had refreshed itself. The inured crust of usage was stripped away, and the physical side responded speedily.
He went into his dressing-room and threw open the huge walnut wardrobe that effaced one wall. It was hung from end to end with clothing. He selected a cheap dun-coloured suit which he had purchased abroad years before for a walking-tour, of whose strenuous occupations it showed some traces in wear, a flannel shirt and a slouch hat, companion of sundry long-ago fishing excursions. He took a nail-scissors and painstakingly cut from each article its maker's name. In the bath-room, first with shears and then with a razor, he cut off his crisp dark beard: never, since his college days abroad, had he seen his own face like that.
Finally arrayed, he regarded himself in the cheval-glass. The Harry Sevier of sumptuous apparel and perfect grooming, the familiar spirit of the place, was gone. In his stead there stood an unfamiliar presence, with smooth-shaven chin and knock-about clothing. And the stranger looked from the depths of the mirror with a gaze from which something tempered and remorseful had vanished, a gaze of avid recklessness and strange, irresponsible daring, the look of one standing on the sheer verge of any hazard, welcoming any throw of the dice, fearing nothing and caring nothing.
As he stood, his hand encountered a small hard object in his pocket. He drew it out. It was a ring, roughly made and holding an uncut emerald almost square in shape. He remembered that once, in the woods, he had bought it for a whim from some gipsy caravan—a luck ring. Much luck it had brought him! Well, it was the gipsy-road now for him. He drew off his seal ring and thrust the other on his finger in its place.
He went quickly out the front door and down to the entrance pulling his hat brim well over his eyes on issuing to the street. As he did so he grazed a lady leisurely passing. It was the plump and pretty Mrs. Spottiswoode. Her glance met his fairly, but there was no sign of recognition; she only drew her trim, modish skirt away from the contact as she passed on.
He walked more rapidly now. He could scarce keep from running—would have done so but for the thronging crowds. The brandy he had drunk in the office had roused the devil of craving; it was in his throat now like the rasp of hot sand-paper and he craved more alcohol with a desperate craving that would not be denied. At the edge of the open square which held the railroad station he plunged into a saloon and pushed through its groups of loungers to the bar.
"A flask of whisky—the best you have," he said.
The bar-tender wiped his hands on his duck jacket and took down a squat bottle. "O. and S.," he said, affably. "Just blown in to town?"
Harry stared him in the eye. "Wrap that thing up, and be quick about it!" was his answer.