The Girl in his House - Harold MacGrath (reading fiction .txt) 📗

IN the bedroom of the Burlingham butler there were two buzzers, one indicating the front door and the other the rear. The tingle of one of them penetrated the butler’s dreams, and he turned on his pillow and tried to bury his head in it. Louder and more insistent grew the sound until it penetrated his consciousness, Edmonds awoke and sat up in bed. He was not in an amiable frame of mind. Possibly he swore at the bell. He turned on the light, eying malevolently the two bells above his door Who, in the name of mischief, could be at the rear door this time of night?

He put on his dressing-gown and slipshods and started down the rear stairs, pressing the light buttons as he went. He paused at the rear door, listening. He could still hear the buzzer going. He unchained the door and opened it slightly.

“Edmonds, that you? Let me in.”

“Who is it?”

“Armitage. I guess I’m a bit hurt.”

Edmonds swung open the door, and the man lurched in.

“Good Heavens, sir!”

“Better call Bob.”

Armitage hauled a chair over to the sink and sat down. With his right hand he lifted his left arm—singularly inert—and rested it in the sink.

Edmonds did not have to summon his master. Bob had also heard the bell. He met the butler at the pantry door.

“What’s all this racket, Edmonds?”

“Mr. Armitage, sir. Says he’s hurt.”

Burlingham rushed out into the kitchen.

“Jim, what on earth’s happened?”

“Bullet through the fleshy part of my arm. Nothing serious, but rather messy. It’s my ankle that really bothers me. Get me some bandages, will you, old scout? I’ve lost considerable blood.”

“But what’s happened?”

“Put your hand inside my coat. Yes, that’s the pocket,”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Burlingham. “The mortgages!”

“Wall safe in the old storeroom. Happened to remember. All my mother’s jewels, too. Pockets filled.”

“Who shot you?”

“She did. Plucky, but frightened.”

Burlingham groped around for a chair and plumped down into it.

“You infernal jackass!” he gasped. “Edmonds, go get Mrs. Burlingham, and tell her to bring the medicine-chest, lints, and bandages.”

“Yes, sir.” The butler hurried off as fast as his slipshods would permit.

“You blockhead! Suppose she had killed you?” Burlingham pushed the hair out of his eyes.

“Well, she didn’t.” Armitage smiled.

“Jim, I always credited you with a normal allotment of brains. This is murderous folly. One of a dozen things might have happened. You might have hurt her.”

“But I didn’t. Bob, I had to get those mortgages. Two of them fall due next month. And the jewels; always had a haunting idea that old Bordman might come back. Can’t you see I had to do it this way?”

“Why didn’t you explain to her? She would have gladly given you anything in the house.”

“That’s true enough. But I’ve mulled over the thing for days. What would she think of a man selling a house with a fortune locked up in a secret wall safe? She would think it queer that the agent hadn’t said something about it. She would begin to think that something was wrong, and sooner or later she would find out. She’s always saying that she still doesn’t understand how I came to sell the house, anyway.”

“And so you played burglar, risked her life perhaps as well as your own; in fact, risked jail and the very explanations you are seeking to avoid. And she shot you!” Burlingham raised his hands toward heaven, or the ceiling, which was nearer. “If you aren’t stark crazy!”

“I’m not defending myself. Besides”— a bit truculently—“it’s my own business.”

“Yes, a fine business! She’ll notify the police. Your footprints in the snow will be traced to my door. Solid ivory! Your arm will be in a sling for days, if blood poisoning doesn’t set in. When she sees you she won’t have the slightest suspicion. She wouldn’t have questioned your right to open that safe. You could have told her that you had forgotten it in the deal. You were thousands of miles away, and all that. She would have been glad to help you. And now you’ve bailed up the whole thing.”

“How?”

“The other night you told us that you loved her, or words to that effect. Her idea of truth and honor is a wonderful thing; and if she finds out what you have done, even if she returned your love, she will always look upon you with a kind of horror. A double horror. She’ll always be picturing in her mind what would have happened if she had killed you. Oh, you’ve done a fine and noble thing! You ought to be locked up in a lunatic asylum. That you, Betty? Jim’s hurt a little.”

“What has happened?”

Burlingham briefly recounted the adventure. If he expected a storm of reproaches from Betty his expectations did not materialize. Instead, she was all silence and tenderness because, somehow, she got farther below the surface of the affair than her husband. She was not impervious to romance, especially romance of this rather wild and unusual sort. She intuitively adjusted herself to Armitage’s point of view.

“I’ll run down to Atlantic City,” said Armitage as they led him to one of the guestrooms. “I know how to handle wounds. I’ve been mauled more than once by the big cats. Am I a fool, Betty?”

“Of a kind, but not Bob’s kind.”

“Sorry to cause you all this trouble, but I had to do it my way. I couldn’t make Durston’s grille with this ankle. You see, I couldn’t keep it out of my head what would happen if she found out that my home had not been sold legally, and her father five thousand miles away. She might have run away to find him.”

“On the contrary,” declared Burlingham,

“she would have written him and brought him home, and the whole business would have been neatly ironed out. What do you say, Betty?”

“I’m not going to say anything. I only know that Jim’s hurt and unhappy. And, wrong or right, the thing is done.”

Armitage left at six in a taxicab the next morning. This early hour was chosen in order to prevent anybody next door observing his departure. His arm ached dully and no doubt would cause him discomfort for some days to come. It was his ankle that bothered him most. He went straight to his hotel, and with the aid of a waiter packed a grip and started for Atlantic City.

He received a letter from Betty two days after his arrival, and the contents rather bewildered him. Doris had not said a word about his midnight adventure. Why? It was utterly out of the question that she could have recognized him. Why, then, did she not confide in Betty?

For ten days he fussed and fumed, harried hotel waiters, bullied the clerks, rode endless miles in wheel-chairs, started a dozen novels and finished none, smoked himself headachy, all with the vague presumption that he was hurrying the clock. On the day he could eat with two hands he paid his bill and returned to New York.

One thing had been accomplished by this enforced inactivity. He had rid his mind of all those agonizing doubts. He loved. He knew now wherein lay the difference between this love and the former one. All shades became apparent to him now, as easily distinguishable as artificial light from the splendor of dawn.

His first inclination, upon leaving the station, was to drive up to the house at once. But he fought the desire successfully. No more harebrained ideas; henceforth he must sail his bark along normal channels. He wanted Doris Athelstone above all things on earth, but he must have patience.

There was one peculiar phase. What doubts he had dismissed were those concerning his own love, its depths and trueness. Never had it entered his head that Doris might not care. It was not egotism, for Armitage lacked that insufferable attribute, and always had. Perhaps later the thing would confront him that Doris might have other ideas regarding her future. But at this period that doubt had no comer in his thoughts. Beyond the fact that he loved Doris with all his heart there was nothing clear.

In his room at the hotel there was a stack of mail. He was still doddering over the apartment idea. He detested the confusion of hotel life. He was no longer gregarious. True, he craved companionship, but not in droves. There were many invitations in the mail. People he had known formerly were beginning to recall him. All save one of these invitations he cast into the wastebasket. This invitation gave him a tingle of genuine pleasure. He was invited to meet a mighty hunter, a man he had known at Nairobi, in British East Africa; that very evening, too. A bit of real luck. Chittenden, the dramatic critic, whom he knew but indifferently, was the host. The affair would begin after a theater party; beer and skittles and no petticoats.

Armitage laid this aside and turned to the telephone. After some irresolution he unlatched the receiver. Presently a voice came over the wire. “Hello!” Always three inflections; when she spoke it, it was like a caress. His hand shook.

“It is I, Armitage.”

“Oh! When did you return?” said the voice.

“About an hour gone.”

“It’s nice of you to call me up.”

He waited, but the invitation did not come. “Could I come up to tea this afternoon?”

“Oh, I’m sorry! I am going out with Mrs. Burlingham.”

“To-morrow, then?”

“Yes.”

“Good-by.”

He hung up the receiver and stared at it for some time. What was the matter? Somehow her voice sounded odd. The old spontaneity was lacking. Generally she bubbled over the telephone. He did not dare ask himself questions.

That afternoon he went over to the office and pottered around uselessly, accomplishing nothing. About three o’clock he called up Betty, rather guiltily. Yes, she and Doris were going to a reception. He might have known that Doris would answer him frankly. Still, there was that lack of bubbling, and it meant something.

He was glad when midnight came around and he made off for Chittenden’s. He knew the critic casually, but he had never been in his apartments, rather famous in their way.

The rooms, when he arrived, were already thick with tobacco smoke. Pipes and cigars and cigarettes were going full tilt. There were about thirty men in the gathering—writers, dramatists, artists, and actors, many of them celebrated.

The great hunter espied Armitage and bored through group after group. The greeting was quiet, as it always is between two men who have known each other in stress. They fell to talking lions and tigers and black panthers or leopards until they had quite a gallery about.

During a