He roused at that to feeble interest, “I—oh, of course not, if you still care to have me, I—I was wondering about—the man who just went out, Stuart, you say? I—told his landlady tonight that he wouldn’t need the room again. I hope she hasn’t rented it to somebody else.”
We cheered him as best we could, and I suggested that we go to Baltimore the next day and try to find the real Sullivan through his wife. He left sometime after midnight, and Richey and I were alone.
He drew a chair near the lamp and lighted a cigarette, and for a time we were silent. I was in the shadow, and I sat back and watched him. It was not surprising, I thought, that she cared for him: women had always loved him, perhaps because he always loved them. There was no disloyalty in the thought: it was the lad’s nature to give and crave affection. Only—I was different. I had never really cared about a girl before, and my life had been singularly loveless. I had fought a lonely battle always. Once before, in college, we had both laid ourselves and our callow devotions at the feet of the same girl. Her name was Dorothy—I had forgotten the rest—but I remembered the sequel. In a spirit of quixotic youth I had relinquished my claim in favor of Richey and had gone cheerfully on my way, elevated by my heroic sacrifice to a somber, white-hot martyrdom. As is often the case, McKnight’s first words showed our parallel lines of thought.
“I say, Lollie,” he asked, “do you remember Dorothy Browne?” Browne, that was it!
“Dorothy Browne?” I repeated. “Oh—why yes, I recall her now. Why?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I was thinking about her. That’s all. You remember you were crazy about her, and dropped back because she preferred me.”
“I got out,” I said with dignity, “because you declared you would shoot yourself if she didn’t go with you to something or other!”
“Oh, why yes, I recall now!” he mimicked. He tossed his cigarette in the general direction of the hearth and got up. We were both a little conscious, and he stood with his back to me, fingering a Japanese vase on the mantel.
“I was thinking,” he began, turning the vase around, “that, if you feel pretty well again, and—and ready to take hold, that I should like to go away for a week or so. Things are fairly well cleaned up at the office.”
“Do you mean—you are going to Richmond?” I asked, after a scarcely perceptible pause. He turned and faced me, with his hands thrust in his pockets.
“No. That’s off, Lollie. The Seiberts are going for a week’s cruise along the coast. I—the hot weather has played hob with me and the cruise means seven days’ breeze and bridge.”
I lighted a cigarette and offered him the box, but he refused. He was looking haggard and suddenly tired. I could not think of anything to say, and neither could he, evidently. The matter between us lay too deep for speech.
“How’s Candida?” he asked.
“Martin says a month, and she will be all right,” I returned, in the same tone. He picked up his hat, but he had something more to say. He blurted it out, finally, halfway to the door.
“The Seiberts are not going for a couple of days,” he said, “and if you want a day or so off to go down to Richmond yourself—”
“Perhaps I shall,” I returned, as indifferently as I could. “Not going yet, are you?”
“Yes. It is late.” He drew in his breath as if he had something more to say, but the impulse passed. “Well, good night,” he said from the doorway.
“Good night, old man.”
The next moment the outer door slammed and I heard the engine of the Cannonball throbbing in the street. Then the quiet settled down around me again, and there in the lamplight I dreamed dreams. I was going to see her.
Suddenly the idea of being shut away, even temporarily, from so great and wonderful a world became intolerable. The possibility of arrest before I could get to Richmond was hideous, the night without end.
I made my escape the next morning through the stable back of the house, and then, by devious dark and winding ways, to the office. There, after a conference with Blobs, whose features fairly jerked with excitement, I double-locked the door of my private office and finished off some imperative work. By ten o’clock I was free, and for the twentieth time I consulted my train schedule. At five minutes after ten, with McKnight not yet in sight, Blobs knocked at the door, the double rap we had agreed upon, and on being admitted slipped in and quietly closed the door behind him. His eyes were glistening with excitement, and a purple dab of typewriter ink gave him a peculiarly villainous and stealthy expression.
“They’re here,” he said, “two of ’em, and that crazy Stuart wasn’t on, and said you were somewhere in the building.”
A door slammed outside, followed by steps on the uncarpeted outer office.
“This way,” said Blobs, in a husky undertone, and, darting into a lavatory, threw open a door that I had always supposed locked. Thence into a back hall piled high with boxes and past the presses of a bookbindery to the freight elevator.
Greatly to Blobs’ disappointment, there was no pursuit. I was exhilarated but out of breath when we emerged into an alleyway, and the sharp daylight shone on Blobs’ excited face.
“Great sport, isn’t it?” I panted, dropping a dollar into his palm, inked to correspond with his face. “Regular walkaway in the hundred-yard dash.”
“Gimme two dollars more and I’ll drop ’em down the elevator shaft,” he suggested ferociously. I left him there with his bloodthirsty schemes, and started for the station. I had a tendency to look behind me now and then, but I reached the station unnoticed. The afternoon was hot, the
