The Girl in his House - Harold MacGrath (reading fiction .txt) 📗
- Author: Harold MacGrath
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“Lordy! but this is like old times!”
A dog suddenly broke forth in shrill, furious barks.
“Somebody’s poodle!” He shrank against the fence and waited for the racket to subside. The old rule still held—barking dogs didn’t bite.
As he rested, a new thought wedged itself in. Clare Wendell! He had come thirteen thousand miles because he had learned that she was a widow, and for nearly three hours he hadn’t given her a single thought. The ironic chuckle died in his throat, however.
It became smothered by a sober, revealing thought. He ought to be very grateful to her. His loyalty had kept the moral fiber of him intact; he was still a white man.
Up the side of the back porch of this house in Seventy-second Street was a heavy trellis. Lightly and soundlessly he mounted this. He had learned to walk with that elastic-giving step, more feline than human. Once on the roof of the porch, he stretched himself out flat and waited for several minutes. He rose. With his penknife he turned the window lock—as he had done a hundred times before—raised the window with extreme care, and slipped inside. Here again he waited. He strained his ears. Six years in the wildernesses had trained them so fine that here in ultra-civilization ordinary sounds were sometimes painful.
Music! He stopped and took the automatic from his pocket. He tiptoed down the hall, careful to observe that there were no lights under any door fine. Some one was playing the piano down-stairs. Step by step he proceeded down to the main hall. Luck was with him; the hall light had been turned off. He crossed the hall and entered the library, or study, which was dark. Between this room and the drawing-room hung heavy curtains. These had been drawn together, and where they joined and along the bottom were ribbons of light.
Music, real music! Years and years ago he had heard that piece, Grieg’s “Danse Arabesque,” and the other woman hadn’t played half so well. He could distinguish the monotonous beating of the camel drums. Curious beyond all reason, he slipped a finger along the edge of one of the curtains and peered through the space thus formed. At that moment the music stopped. The performer turned her face toward the piano lamp—a wonderful Ming jar—and the interloper caught his breath.
He was gazing upon the loveliest young face he had ever seen—pearl and pomegranate and Persian peach! There was an amber nimbus of light hovering over her soft brown hair. Who was she, and what in the world was she doing here? The latent sense of the ethical stirred and awoke for the first time in many months. He felt the itch of the hair shirt of society, and the second sense was one of overpowering shame. He had neither legal nor moral right behind these curtains.
Had the girl come toward him just then she would have discovered him. He was entranced, incapable of mobility. But she did not come his way. She walked over to a window, out of which she gazed for a while.
She turned, stretched out two incomparable arms—and yawned most humanly. “Oh… dear!”
The curtains were antique Japanese silk tapestries, quite as beautiful and rare as any of the Polish rugs, and the dust of centuries still impregnated the warp and woof.
Having had his nose against the fabric for several minutes, Armitage suddenly trembled with terror. He became conscious of the inclination to sneeze. He struggled valiantly, but to no avail. “At-choo!” he thundered.
“Who’s there?” cried the girl in crisp, clear, affrighted tones.
WHAT a predicament! Realizing that he could not stop to explain, that he had not entered the right way for explanation, and that, if the servants became alarmed, he would be in for it seriously and more or less complicatedly, he turned and fled. Noise did not matter now; he must gain that open window before any of the servants could outflank him. All in this house, the house he had been born in—flights, servants, and the loveliest girl he had ever laid eyes on!
Up the stairs in three bounds and down the hall, incredibly swift, thence through the window and onto the roof of the porch. He jumped hardily; there was no time for the trellis. The girl was hot upon his heels; he could hear her. Artemis, Diana; for, as he struck the turf, he saw from the comer of his eye—one of those undeveloped pictures one is never quite certain of—the white of her dress at the window. In Bagdad now, or Delhi, or even Teheran, such an affair would have fitted into the scheme of things quite naturally; but here in New York!
He ran straight for the fence, scrambled over rather than vaulted it. Then that infernal poodle began yammering again. He was later to be made aware of the fact that this same benighted and maligned poodle saved him from a night’s lodging in the nearby police station. Armitage did not pause in his inglorious flight until he was on the right of the grille in Seventy-third Street.
He leaned against the bars, panting, but completely and thoroughly reveneered. “Of all the colossal tomfools!” he said, aloud. “What in thunder am I going to do now?”
“Well, Aloysius,” boomed a heavy voice, which was followed by a still heavier hand, “you might come along with me; the walking’s good. Bell out o’ order? Was there any beer in the ice-chest?” The policeman peered under the peak of Armitage’s cap. “I saw you climb over that grille. Up with your hands, and no monkey-shines, or I’ll rap you one on the conk!”
Armitage obeyed mechanically. There was a temporary cut-off between his mind and his body; they had ceased to co-ordinate. The policeman patted all the pockets, and a thrill of relief ran over the victim. Somewhere along the route he had lost the automatic. As he felt the experienced fingers going over his body he summoned with Herculean effort his scattered forces. Smack into the arms of a policeman! Here was a situation which called for a vast political pull or a Machiavellian cunning.
“Well, what’s the dope?” demanded the policeman, rather puzzled to find neither weapons nor burglarious tools.
“I take it you’re a reasonable man,” said Armitage, breathlessly.
“Can the old-folks stuff. What were you doing in that yard?”
“Supposing I tell you I’ve done nothing wrong, that my name is James Armitage, and that—” Armitage paused, shocked. He couldn’t tell this policeman anything. The thought of the girl made it utterly impossible. He would simply be taken around and confronted. Bog, bog! He could feel himself sinking deeper and deeper every moment.
“Well, go on,” urged the policeman, ironically. “This is Friday and everything smells fish.”
“This is your beat?” asked Armitage, desperately.
“It is; and I’m always on it, and no back talk.”
As the little bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope tumble into recognizable forms so Armitage’s broken thoughts tumbled into coherency. He had just one chance. “Do you know Robert Burlingham?”
“Around in Seventy-second Street? Yeah. I begin to see. Poker game, and the missus comes back from the country. Oh, I’m a good listener, believe me. Go on.”
“The fact is,” Armitage floundered, “I just got back from the other side of the world to-day, and I thought I’d give Burlingham a scare by going in the rear way.”
“I was born in Ireland, but I vote in Missouri. But I’m a good listener; always ready to hear new stuff. Go on.”
“Well, a poodle began yapping and I got cold feet.”
“Of all the poor, old, blind alibis! But I’m going to give you a chance. We’ll go around to Burlingham’s. I’m giving you this chance, because I heard that poodle myself.”
“The sooner the better!” Armitage let go a great sigh. “If he doesn’t identify me, if he doesn’t attest to my honesty—why, I’ll agree to go anywhere you say, peacefully.”
“You mean that?”
“On my honor. I tried a boy’s trick and fell down on it.”
The policeman hesitated. Finally he poked Armitage in the side with his night stick. “I’ll go you, Aloysius. I’ll see this through. It’s a new one, and I want to know all about it for future reference. March!”
So Armitage—Changing between laughter and swear words—marched on ahead, feeling from time to time, if he slackened his pace, the tip of the night stick in his ribs. He wasn’t in New York at all; he was in the ancient city of Bagdad. If the Burlinghams were out for the evening he was lost.
When they came to the Burlingham house, which was next door to the house he had just left so ignominiously, Armitage stopped. “He lives here.”
“Right. Now waltz up and ring the bell. I’ll be right in your shadow, Aloysius.”
Armitage pushed the button. Two minutes later the door opened. “Hello, Edmonds!” Armitage hailed, gratefully. Here was someone who could identify him, Bob’s old butler.
The old fellow squinted, stepped forward, then backward, and raised his hands. “Why, it’s Mr. Armitage come back!”
“Is Bob home?”
“Yes, sir. Come right in…. But what’s this?… A policeman?”
“A little question of identification, Edmonds, that’s all. Step inside, officer.”
The policeman did so, removing his cap. He stood on one leg, then on the other, no longer doubtful, but confused and embarrassed.
The butler hurried off.
“Say,” said the policeman, cautiously. “looks as if I’d pulled a near bone. You get my side of it, don’t you?”
“Certainly. You would have been perfectly justified in carrying me off to jail.”
But what would this policeman think when he returned to the station and heard that there had been a burglar in the house next door?
“Well, you took some risks, believe me, playing that kind of a game. I wouldn’t try it again.”
“I can promise that.”
A man about Armitage’s age and a pretty woman came rushing out into the hall.
“Jim, you scalawag, is it really you?”
“Jimmie Armitage?”
“Alive and kicking. Bob, suppose you tell this officer that I’m all right. He caught me climbing over Durston’s grille.”
“Durston’s grille?” Burlingham roared with laughter. Durston’s grille, full of historical significance relative to their youth! How many times had they stolen over it in order to have a perfectly good alibi the next morning for a perfectly incredible father! “I’ll back Armitage, Hanrahan. He went away before you came on this beat.”
“All right. I’ll be getting back to it.”
“Got any cigars, Bob?”
They filled the policeman’s pockets and turned him forth into the night.
As the door closed Armitage leaned against the wall and smiled weakly. “That was a narrow squeak,” he said. “I’ll tell you something about it later… Betty! … Bob!… Lordy, how wonderful it is to see you again!”
The two caught his hands in theirs and dragged him into the cozy library, where they plumped him down into the lounge before the wood fire and flanked him. The three of them had been brought up in this neighborhood,
“Jimmie, my word, I never expected to see you again! We’d get a letter from you once in a while, but we couldn’t answer; you didn’t want any news from home. We sent holiday cards to your villa on the Como,
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