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

ARMITAGE walked as men walk in nightmares. He bumped into pedestrians and jarred his knees in stepping off curbs blindly. He wasn’t going anywhere; he was just walking. The same identical photograph, the same pose! Daniel Morris —Hubert Athelstone! Morris had actually died in 1870. Twins? Had the pose in one photograph differed from the pose in the other, the supposition might have had weight. No, no; there was something monumentally wrong about this affair; and there didn’t seem any way of solving it. The two photographs were identical; there was no getting away from the cameo stickpin in the tie. Anyhow, it was not possible that the man in the photograph was Doris’s father. He had died in 1870. Armitage computed the years. Had he lived he would be seventy-five, a tottering old man, whose greatest exploit would be to walk down to the comer once a day for his tobacco. All these cogitations served merely to bring Armitage back to the beginning of the circle.

Where should he go? He could not go on wandering all over New York; and yet he knew he would not sleep if he went to the hotel. He looked about with seeing eyes for the first time, and recognized the locality. He was within a block of the office. Good! He would go up there and try to figure it out. He felt in his pocket and was pleased to find that he was carrying his keys. He would smoke his pipe, pace, and think.

The same photograph, absolutely the same!

He entered the Armitage, still brooding, and mounted the stairs. He had fallen again under the spell of hypnosis. His actions were mechanical. He stooped before the door to insert the key—and straightened up, galvanized. Lights! He had walked squarely up to the door without noticing the lights! Had he turned them on accidentally that morning? Or had the scrubwoman forgotten to turn them off? He looked at his watch. It was nearly two. He turned the key and pushed in the door. But he did not cross the threshold immediately.

Seated at the desk, with his head on his arms, was a man. All that Armitage could see was the shape of the head and a few straggling wisps of drab hair. Armitage waited, confused as to how to act. Finally he stepped over to the desk, laid a hand firmly on the sleeper’s shoulder, and pulled him back to an upright position. His hand fell away suddenly.

The stranger was Bordman.

“You?” cried Armitage, stormily.

“I must have fallen asleep,” said Bordman, softly. “I didn’t know that I could ever fall asleep again.”

“Of all the colossal nerve! Bordman, I’m going to have you locked up just as soon as I can get the police here,” declared Armitage as he picked up the telephone.

“It is too late.”

“Not by many hours!”

“I am dying.”

Armitage set down the telephone. He looked down into the face of his despoiler. The cavernous eyes, burning like agate, the shining cheek-bones, the hollow cheeks, the veil of drabness over all—Armitage was forced to admit that the man was ill.

“I am dying. After all, it is a happy way out…. I came up here… because the few happy hours I’ve known in years were spent in this room…. I could not die down there…. And God has brought you here at this hour!”

Armitage felt his wrath fade as a breath on a mirror fades. He was stirred by a strange compassion. It hadn’t paid, then? The old scoundrel hadn’t been able to get any pleasure out of his ill-gotten spoils? The way of the transgressor! He was patently in a pitiable condition.

“Shall I call a doctor?”

“Well… if you wish.”

Armitage took up the telephone again. He was able to rout out an old friend of the family, who volunteered to come at once to the office.

“It didn’t pay, Bordman. It didn’t pay, did it?”

“No. And so I came back… here.”

“Where you hatched your abominable crime.”

“Abominable…. Yet, I divided with you. You are still in comfortable circumstances. You are on the way to become a man”—with an ironical smile.

“But my home—the things I treasured! You robbed me and cheated the other man.”

“No doubt I am one of the damned.”

Bordman spoke as if carefully guarding his voice, his breath. “Let us be calm. Don’t excite me…. Another hemorrhage and I am done for; and I must make use of my time…. Conscience is a strange thing. It drove me; I could not resist it…. So here I am.”

“I forgive you, Bordman, if that will ease you any.”

“You… forgive?”

“Yes. Only, you must restore what you took, or what is left of it. What a joke! You rooked me. I ought to curse you, and yet I feel more inclined to bless you.”

The old man’s lips moved, but no sound came through them.

“In your debt!” went on Armitage, a bit wildly. “For if you hadn’t rooked me, there would never have come into my life— love! A bit of thistledown with a soul—a fairy, turned into a human being, still retaining the fairy’s mind!”

“The other… the one who made you run away?” whispered Bordman.

“Lord! she doesn’t exist! The more I think of it the more I’m certain that I’m in your debt. But for you I’d never have known her—the daughter of the man you sold the house to. Bordman, you saw that man. What’s the matter with him that he doesn’t appear on the scene? What’s he done? If I had a daughter like that, no earthly treasures would or could keep me from her. Tombs!… Oh, I say, Bordman!”

But Bordman continued to sag. His body slipped from the chair to the floor, and Armitage ran to his side. He put his arms under the fragile body and carried it over to the lounge. The poor, unhappy wretch! Armitage began to pace the room impatiently, every now and then peering down into the drab face. Ten minutes later there came a rap on the door, and Armitage sprang toward it.

One glance at Bordman was enough for the doctor. He caught up the telephone and called for an ambulance.

“Bad?” asked Armitage.

“He’s been bad for a long while. By the look of him, he’s been a dead man for a month gone. He must have kept on his feet by sheer will. Who is he?”

“My old real-estate agent. He went away some months ago; but he went away too late. Poor devil!”

Poor devil indeed! thought Armitage. All his beautiful plans had come to naught. A sick man the day he absconded, probably. Not a bit of joy out of the deed, only misery, mental and physical. Why had he done it?

“He is really dying?”

“Yes. I’ll give him a few hours. The next fit of coughing will be his last. There, he’s coming around. But don’t talk to him. We’ll get him over to the hospital first.”

“I’ll go along with you. He hasn’t a soul in the world to look after him, so far as I know.”

It was half after three when they laid Bordman out on the hospital cot. There was nothing to do but await the end. Any moment the hemorrhage might attack him, and that would be the end.

“I wish to talk,” Bordman whispered.

The doctor shook his head. “If you like…”

“Something to deaden the desire to cough for a few minutes!”

“I can do that,” said the doctor. “But it will only hasten the end,” he added, warningly.

“So much the better. Give it to me!”

A drab little man, with weak eyes, a ragged drab mustache, drab hair; a face that was drab death’s sketched on a drumhead. All these years of rectitude, then out of the drab orbit like a comet, only to circle back, beaten, broken! thought Armitage. Why had he done it? What infernal impulse had flung him into the muck of dishonor?

“Tell the doctor to leave us. I feel the drug.”

“He wants to talk to me alone,” said Armitage.

“All right. I’ll go over to that empty cot there. Wave your hand when you want me.”

Armitage understood. Bordman wanted to tell hun where and how he had hidden the money. He was glad now that he had forgiven. There was nothing now but infinite pity in his heart.

“Lean down,” whispered Bordman.

Armitage did so.

“The girl in your house…. You love her?”

“Yes.” But Armitage was startled.

“Real love?”

“From the bottom of my soul. But…”

“Beautiful, like a flower! Ah, she is beautiful!… I had tea with her one afternoon, and she was gentle and kind… beautiful… I have committed a crime, a terrible crime… Money has nothing to do with it. But God understands the least of us, and forgives. I know He has forgiven me… because you are here.”

Silence. Armitage could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall. A high, thin wail came from the maternity ward.

“I am… Hubert Athelstone… Doris is my daughter!”