“You will find my bachelor way of living very primitive,” he said, with his engaging smile. He arranged the robes over two of the chairs and pushed them close up to the stove. “I haven’t an easy chair in the house—prove it by Paul, here. Haven’t time to rock, and can’t afford to run the risk of cultivating slothful habits. Take these, do,” he urged, “and remove your coats.”
“Thank you—you are very kind,” said Louise. “No, I won’t take off my jacket,” a spot of color staining her cheek when she thought of her gay kimono. Involuntarily, she felt of her throat to make sure the muffler had not blown awry. “We shall be going soon, shan’t we, Mr. Langford? If Mr. Gordon is in any danger, you must stay with him and let us go alone. It is not far.”
“Surely,” said Mary, with a big sinking of the heart, but meaning what she said.
“Not at all,” said Gordon, decidedly. “It’s just his womanish way of bossing me. I’ll rebel some day. Just wait! But before you go, I’ll make tea. You must have gotten chilled through.”
He would keep them here a while and then let them go—with Langford. The thought made him feel cheap and cowardly and sneaking. Far rather would he step out boldly and take his chances. But if there was to be any shooting, it must be where Louise,—and Mary, too—was not. He believed Paul, in his zeal, had exaggerated evil omens, but there was Louise in his bachelor rooms—where he had never thought to see her; there with her cheeks flushed with the proximity to the stove—his stove—her fair hair windblown. No breath of evil thing must assail her that night—that night, when she had glorified his lonely habitation—even though he himself must slink into a corner like a cowardly cur. A strange elation took possession of him. She was here. He thought of last night and seemed to walk on air. If he won out, maybe—but, fool that he was! what was there in this rough land for a girl like—Louise?
“Oh, no, that will be too much trouble,” gasped Louise, in some alarm and thinking of Aunt Helen.
“Thanks, old man, we’ll stay,” spoke up Langford, cheerfully. “He makes excellent tea—really. I’ve tried it before. You will never regret staying.”
Silently he watched his friend in the inner room bring out a battered tea-kettle, fill it with a steady hand and put it on the stove in the office, coming and going carelessly, seemingly conscious of nothing in the world but the comfort of his unexpected guests.
True to her sex, Louise was curiously interested in the housekeeping arrangements of a genuine bachelor establishment. Woman-like, she saw many things in the short time she was there—but nothing that diminished her respect for Richard Gordon. The bed in the inner chamber where both men slept was disarranged but clean. Wearing apparel was strewn over chairs and tables. There was a litter of magazines on the floor. She laid them up against Langford; she did not think Gordon had the time or inclination to cultivate the magazine habit. She did not know to whose weakness to ascribe the tobacco pouch and brier-wood pipe placed invitingly by the side of a pair of gay, elaborately bead-embroidered moccasons, cosily stowed away under the head of the bed; but she was rather inclined to lay these, too, to Langford’s charge. The howling tempest outside only served to enhance the cosiness of the rumbling fire and the closely drawn blinds.
But tea was never served in those bachelor rooms that night—neither that night nor ever again. It was a little dream that went up in flame with the walls that harbored it. Who first became conscious that the tang of smoke was gradually filling their nostrils, it was hard to tell. They were not far behind each other in that consciousness. It was Langford who discovered that the trouble was at the rear, where the wind would soon have the whole building fanned into flames. Gordon unlocked the door quietly. He said nothing. But Paul, springing in front of him, himself threw it open. It was no new dodge, this burning a man out to shoot him as one would drown out a gopher for the killing. He need not have been afraid. The alarm had spread. The street in front was rapidly filling. One would hardly have dared to shoot—then—if one had meant to. And he did not know. He only knew that deviltry had been in the air for Gordon that night. He had suspected more than he had overheard, but it had been in the air.