The night elevator man was almost slumbering peacefully before the telephone switchboard as they traversed the hall to the vestibule, and the street itself seemed deserted, but from afar echoed the measured tread of the watchman approaching upon his rounds.
“Let’s cut across to the path,” suggested Storm with a hint of nervousness in his lowered tones. “It is better walking, and you can get a really magnificent view of the river lights from a few blocks further up.”
He led his companion across the driveway and bridle road to the path deeply enshrouded by trees and bordered by the low stone wall which ran along the edge of the embankment. The night was moonless, but overhead the stars shone brightly and the broad sweep of the river below them at their left was dotted with the lights of ships and barges riding at anchor or moving slowly out with the tide.
“By jingo, it’s some night!” Horton thrust back his shoulders and drew in a deep breath as he strode along at the rapid, vigorous gait of one habituated to covering long distances afoot. “Glad you thought of getting a bit of air, Norman; this is great! Look at the old river down there, and the Palisades beyond! I tell you there isn’t a spot on the face of the earth that can touch little old New York!”
“I like it out here myself. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I walk along this path for hours, watching the lights and the river; there is a bigness and impersonality about it that is restful.” Storm spoke truly, but back of his mind was the shuddering consciousness that never again would he find peace and tranquility in this nocturnal haunt. After tonight the shadows would be peopled with ghosts, the dark river would run red and the frowning cliffs on the farther bank would echo with the doings of this hour.——What matter? He would be far away with the means to live his own life and not a trace left behind him! Unconsciously his grip tightened on the cane, and he glanced speculatively at his companion. How easy it was going to be! Just a moment of steady courage, of carefully calculated effort; one smash—and the task would be accomplished! A few more blocks, a quarter mile at most——!
“You ought to see the harbor at Yokohama,” Horton remarked. “Prettiest sight in the world when a ship comes in, if you didn’t have to use your nose at the same time! All the sampans come out with their strings of colored lights and I can tell you they beat our barges any day in the week for picturesqueness! You hear the coolies chanting and the samyens and samisens tinkling, and the very taste of the East is in your mouth. Oh, I’m not getting poetic from the effects of your Scotch, old scout! It’s all ugly enough and dirty and mean and distorted in the daylight, but there is a witchery over it at night. Here you don’t get that; there’s a hard-and-fast realism about it that dispels any illusion. It is a sort of bigness, as you say, but it doesn’t hit me with any dolce-far-niente stuff; it means bustle to me, and commerce and adventure and wealth. Gee, when I’ve made my pile I’d like to sit in at the window of one of those white stone fronts over there and watch my coal barges slouching along on the end of a tow line and my cranes and winches and flat-cars getting busy along the docks! Fine pipe dream for a guy whose only contact with big money is in handling other people’s, eh?”
He laughed boyishly, without cynicism, and Storm clapped him on the shoulder with assumed heartiness.
“You’ll get there yet, Jack! Perhaps you’re on the way to it now, who knows?” Only six blocks more and then they would reach that turn in the path! The unintended double significance in his words swept over him, and he felt an insane desire to laugh aloud. “You say you are in right with this Mid-Eastern Consolidated Corporation, and your wife will have money——”
“I’m not marrying her for what her old man has got!” Horton interrupted hastily. “It may be convenient some time for her to be able to help me swing something big, but you understand I like that little girl for herself. She’s a thoroughbred, if her mother did run a miner’s boarding house in the old days, and she’s got the pep to keep a fellow right up on his toes and make him make good on his own account. I kind of wish I had telephoned to her to-night; it’ll be a couple of weeks at least before I can hit this burg again, and I’d like to have heard her voice——”
“You can ’phone in the morning,” Storm suggested, his eyes intent upon the path ahead. A figure was advancing toward them out of the darkness, and midway between them a street lamp shed broad rays. They would meet the stranger directly beneath it if they kept up their present gait. Storm halted deliberately and drew out his cigarette case. “Wait half a second till I get a light. Tell you what you can do, Jack. Stop over a train in Philadelphia with me to-morrow and call the lady up from there.”