The Girl in His House

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The Girl in His House

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"WHO'S THERE?" CRIED THE GIRL IN CRISP, CLEAR, UNAFFRIGHTED TONES

Chapter I

The Girl in His House

CHAPTER I

ARMITAGE had come thirteen thousand miles—across deserts, through jungles, over snow-clad peaks—as fast as camels and trains and ships could carry him, driven by an all-compelling desire. Sixty-odd days ago he had been in the amber-mines in the Hukawng Valley, where Upper Burma ends and western China begins; and here he was, riding up old Broadway—a Broadway that twinkled and glittered and glared with the same old colored clock lights. Men were queer animals. He had sworn never to set foot inside of New York again.

A paragraph in a New York newspaper, a sheet more than a year old and fallen to the base usage of wrapping-paper and protecting temporarily a roll of pudgy Burmese cheroots from the eternal mold of the middle Orient, had started him upon this tremendous, swinging journey. A thousand times he had perused that paragraph. Frayed and tattered to the point of disintegration, the clipping now reposed in his wallet. He no longer disturbed it; it wasn't necessary; he knew it by heart and could recite it word for word:

JOHN SANDERSON, the multimillionaire packer, died yesterday at his summer home on Lake Michigan. He was sixty-nine years old.

The woman who had jilted Armitage was a widow.

Curious thing! He had come down from the top of the world, as it were, shamelessly, a flame in his heart that resembled a torch in the wind. So long as he pressed down through the jungles and deserts the flame burned with unabated ardor; but at Mandalay—the outer rim of civilization—it began to waver a little. At Rangoon it was like a candle in a breathless room. But on the way over to Calcutta it burst forth anew, and never wavered again until he came out on the tea veranda of the Bertolini and stared across Naples at Vesuvius in the moonlight. Even then he had not realized what was happening—that his torch, having nothing celestial in its substance, was burning out.

Two hours ago, as the great ship slipped into her berth, the last spark had flickered and vanished, leaving him with his heart full of bitter ashes. To have come thirteen thousand miles, like a whirlwind, only to learn that for six years he had been the victim of a delusion! He laughed aloud in savage irony. The old habits of civilization were clamoring for recognition; and first among these was the sense of shame, not because he had come all this distance, but because his love had been a poor thing and had not been strong enough to survive the ordeal. What an incomprehensible thing was the human heart!

Six long years in the far wildernesses, hugging a cold shadow for a substance, imagining himself to be a martyr when in truth he was only a simple fool! Shamelessly he had come to throw himself at her feet again; and behold! he was without desire.

The taxicab stopped. As Armitage stared over the shutter his mouth opened and his brows became Gothic arches of amazed inquiry. The obsequies over a dead passion came to an abrupt, unfinished ending; the whole dismal affair went out of his thoughts as a wisp of smoke leaves a chimney-pot and disappears.

What in the name of the seven wonders could this mean? Lights—lights in the windows and lights in the hall. The silhouette of a woman appeared at one of the drawing-room windows. She was evidently looking out. Almost immediately she drew back. Armitage felt that frozen immobility peculiar to nightmares. Was he truly awake?

The front door of the brownstone opened and a bareheaded man ran down the steps to the vehicle. The smooth brass buttons on his coat marked him down as a butler. "Mr. Athelstone?" he asked, with subdued excitement.

"No. My mistake. I say, driver, we'll go to the hotel, after all."

"All right, sir."

"Sorry to trouble you. Wrong number," said Armitage to the astonished butler.

The taxicab grumbled and sputtered and started off jerkily; but until it wheeled around into Fifth Avenue the butler remained at the curb, while the world-wide traveler never took his bewildered gaze off the house with the lighted windows. Something inconceivable had happened, something so incredible and unexpected that Armitage was at that moment powerless to readjust himself to the event.

"Am I in the middle of a nightmare, or what?" he murmured, fumbling in his pockets for his pipe. "Lights, a butler, and a woman at the window!" All at once he felt inspired.

"I say, driver, what street was that?"

"The street and number you gave me, Sir.

"Seventy-second?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you see the lights in the windows? Did you see the woman behind the curtains? Did a butler come down the steps?"

"Yes, sir. I heard him ask you if you were Mr. Athelstone."

"Then, by George, I'm awake!"

The driver escaped the heavy forewheels of an omnibus only by the narrowest margin. By the time he was in a mental condition to tell the omnibus-driver all about his family history it was too late; the rear wheels of the lumbering colossus of the asphalt were passing.

"Bug, pure bug!" he grumbled. This observation was not directed at the vanishing omnibus-driver; it was the final round of a series of cogitations relative to this "fare" of his. "Nothing to it; I ought to go straight to Bellevue. Lights? Of course there were lights!" He reached for the clutch and swore softly as the steamer trunk nicked his elbow.

Of all the queer dubs he had ever driven off Pier 53, this chap inside took the palm, ribbon and all. Off to the Racket Club as fast as the law allowed, only to hear his ludship say that he had forgotten he was no longer a member. Then, bang! for the hotel in Forty-second Street, where there was more doddering; and, whoof! a mile a minute up to the brownstone in Seventy-second. Lost in little old New York. And now the dub was smoking a pipe strong enough to knock over a fire-horse. Luggage? Well, say! Three suit-cases that had come out of the Ark, and a battered English kitbag that had been Cain's on the big hike, and a gun-case that weighed a ton and must have scared the customs inspectors stiff.

When he stopped at the hotel entrance he looked thoughtfully at the meter. The old girl was working to the minute and was registering four dollars and eighty cents. He braced himself and shot out his jaw truculently. Now for that old mossback about crooked meters.

The curb porter threw open the door. The "fare" extricated himself from the luggage and stepped forth. "Here, driver; and keep the change."

The chauffeur, wise as Solomon and shrewd as Jacob, hastily inspected the bill under the meter lamp. It was a tenner. Five-twenty for a tip? Well, well; that wasn't so bad for a lunatic. "Thank you, sir," he mumbled, with rather a shamefaced amiability.

Armitage went into the lobby and wended his way through the superdressed dinner crowd to the desk. Two bell-boys staggered after him, panting. They set down the luggage and eyed it curiously. They were tolerably familiar with foreign labels, but here was a collection totally unknown to them. The clerk swung out the register and casually glanced at the straight body, the lean, tanned, handsome face of the guest, who, after a moment of trifling indecision, wrote "James Armitage, Como, Italy."

Once in his room, Armitage called for the floor waiter: "A club steak, fried sweets, lettuce, chilli sauce, and a pot of coffee. Have it here quarter after eight. That will give me leeway for a bath."

"Yes, sir."

As the door closed Armitage scowled at his luggage, up from which drifted vaguely the unpleasant odor of formaldehyde. Lights—a woman behind the curtains—a butler who wanted to know if he was Mr. Athelstone!

"Hang me!" He climbed over the grips to the telephone and called up a number. "Give me Mr. Bordman, please.… Not at home? … What? … Went away last April? … Thank you."

Armitage turned away from the telephone and twisted his mustache violently. Fear laid hold of him, that indescribable fear which, twist and turn as one may, keeps its face hidden. Below this fear stirred a primordial instinct: the instinct which causes a dog in the hour of carnal satiety to take the bare bone and bury it against a future need. Thunderstruck, Armitage recollected for the first time that he had not buried his bone.

"Pshaw! But that's utterly impossible."

He had bathed and dressed by the time the waiter returned—dressed in the same suit he had worn on board the ship. As the tantalizing aroma from the steak tickled his nostrils he forgot everything except the longing to satisfy a singular craving which had, metaphorically, ridden behind his saddle for six years. A thousand nights he had sat before acrid dung fires and dreamed of club steaks.

Finishing this delectable meal, a weirdly humorous idea popped into his head. He cleaned his pipe, put on a pair of rubber shoes, loaded his automatic, and set forth upon an adventure which was destined to renew his interest in civilization.

It was October. An east wind was blowing heartily and the old familiar tang of the sea was in the air. There was something in it that stirred in Armitage's mind fragmentary pictures from the seven seas, the sandy forelands, the bending cocoanut palms, the gay parrakeets in the clove-trees. The East was calling; and shortly he knew he would be answering it again. For the present, however, his destination was the brownstone house in Seventy-second Street, once ordinary enough, but now endued with a genuine mystery. The house was one of six in a compact row, a survival of the bald, ugly architecture of the seventies.

Upon finding himself in front of this house, Armitage knocked his pipe against the heel of his shoe. "I'm a reasonable man," he mused aloud—a habit he had acquired in the somber solitudes where the homely sound of one's voice is often a buckler against the unknown terrors of the night. "But who the dickens is this man Athelstone?"

He understood one fact clearly: six years ago he would not have contemplated, much less put to action, the project he now had in mind. He would have gone resolutely, if conveniently, up the steps, rung the bell, and satisfied his doubts peremptorily. In those far-off days impulses had always been carefully looked into and constantly rejected as either unlawful or unethical. He still recognized the unlawful, but the ethical no longer disturbed his mental processes. What he purposed to do was not exactly unlawful, considering his foreknowledge, but it was decidedly unethical. The thing had a thrill in it, a spice of danger, a bit of leopard-stalking in the dark. Without appreciating the fact—or, if he did, ignoring it—Armitage had sloughed off much of the veneer of civilization and now reveled in primordial sensations.

He was going into that house, through the back way, like an ordinary porch-climber, because the method appealed to him and because, legally and morally (as he supposed), he had the right to enter in any manner he pleased.

He went on, turned down Seventy-third Street until he came to a house that had a small lawn at one side, protected by a high iron grille. Glancing right and left to assure himself that his actions were unobserved, he climbed over this grille, easily and silently, like the practised athlete he was. Crouching, he ran down the garden to the rear fence, which was of board. A single vault carried him over this. Over three more wooden fences he went, avoiding ash-cans and clothes-lines, until he came to a pause in the rear of the brownstone in Seventy-second Street. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

"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, unaffrighted tones.

Chapter II

CHAPTER II

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—lights, 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 corner 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—hanging 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, but I don't suppose they found you. Thought you were gone for good."

"I didn't," said Mrs. Burlingham, who, like all happily wedded women, believed in clairvoyance. "What brought you back?"—confident that she knew.

"How's the baby?" countered Armitage.

"Baby? Why, the baby is twelve, and doing his bit at a military school. Some boy, Jim. If you turn out to be half as fine a man as he is—" Burlingham slapped his boyhood friend on the shoulder. "But what brought you back?"

"Fate," said Armitage, soberly. "But I thought it was this." He took out the clipping and handed it to Betty.

Now that he was safely at anchor in a most congenial harbor, he became aware of a strange, indescribable exhilaration. A superficial analysis convinced him that it was not due to the propinquity of these old friends of his; rather the cause lay over there in the dark, beyond the shadows. Over and above this, he was in a quandary. How much should he tell of this tomfool exploit of his? Just enough to whet their curiosity, or just nothing at all? Sooner or later, though. Bob, who was a persistent chap, would be asking about Durston's grille.

Would she notify the police? He wasn't sure. She seemed rather a resolute young woman. Heavens! she had been after him like a hawk after a hare! Pearl and pomegranate and Persian peach! Was he fickle? Was that it? No. A fickle man could not have remained loyal for six years to the memory of a jilt. He determined to ask some questions later—cautious, roundabout questions. He was far off his course, with a paper compass and nothing to take the sun with. And still that tingle of exhilaration!

"And so that brought you back?" said Betty, returning the clipping.

"No; I only thought it brought me back. I honestly believe that I never really loved Clare at all. Else, why should I be glad to be back, assured that I can meet her without wabbling at the knees?" Armitage rolled the clipping into a ball and tossed it into the fire.

"She was here to tea this afternoon, Jim," said Betty, softly.

"She's back in town, then, with her millions?"

"Yes. She's different, though. I really think she cared for you. From a lovely girl she has become a beautiful woman."

"Nothing doing, Betty. I shall never marry." Armitage pulled out his pipe and filled it.

"Oh, piffle!" exploded Burlingham. "You're only thirty-four. Mark me, old scout, after six years' roaming around jungles and hobnobbing with 'duskies,' you'll fall for the first 'skirt' that makes googoo eyes at you. On the other hand, much as I like Clare, I'm glad you didn't hook up. She's beautiful, but hard. And don't you fool yourself that you weren't in love with her. You were; but you got over it."

"Piffle! A bit of slang sounds good."

"If human beings couldn't fall out of love as quickly and easily as they fall in, the murder editions of the evening papers would be on the streets before breakfast"; and Burlingham got out his pipe also.

For a quarter of an hour the two men sat in silence, puffing and blowing rings and sleepily eying the fire. Betty watched them amusedly. Weren't they funny! They hadn't seen each other in six long years, and hadn't ever expected to see each other again; and here they were, smoking their dreadful pipes and saying never a word! Two women, now—

"Say, Jim, that pipe of yours is a bird."

"Calabash I made myself."

"Well, when you bury it invite me to the funeral."

"Is it strong?"

"Strong? Wow! It would kill a bull elephant quicker than an express bullet. But finish her up and give us the dope about Durston's grille."

Armitage leaned forward and knocked the "dottle" from his pipe. "When I found that clipping I became full of flame. On the way down from Maingkwan to Mandalay there was a torch in my heart. But, somehow, when I reached Naples I could feel the fire dying down. I hated myself, but I could not escape the feeling. When I stepped off the ship to-day I knew that I had done a sensible thing in surrendering to a mad, shameless impulse. I came very near throwing away my whole life for something that had ceased to exist or had never existed. Folks, I'm absolutely cured."

"Going to quit wandering?"

"Perhaps. Great world over there; fascinating."

"But where will you put up here? You've sold the old house. Jim, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard the news last April. To sell the house wasn't so much, considering you never intended to return; but to sell it furnished, with all those treasures your mother and father had so much fun in collecting! I couldn't quite understand that." Burlingham shook his head.

"Nor I," added his wife.

Armitage, despite the fact that the room was warm, sensed something like a cold finger running up and down his spine. "I suppose it did seem callous to you two. But, honestly, I never expected to come back again. How much does rumor say I got for it?" He dared not look at them.

"Eighty thousand."

"That's a tidy sum. I say, what sort of people are they?"

"We've met only the daughter," said Betty, "And, Jimmie Armitage, she's the loveliest creature I ever saw. Odd, unusual; in all my life I've never met any woman quite like her. She has the queerest ideas. The whole world is nothing except a fairy-story to her. I loved her the moment I saw her. Have you ever run across or heard of Hubert Athelstone, explorer and archeologist?"

"Athelstone? No. But that doesn't signify anything. Those chaps are a queer breed. They are known only among themselves. I've run into a few of them. They eat hieroglyphics, walk in a maze of them, sleep on them, and die under them. Almost always they are unattached, homeless beggars, or, if they have families, they forget all about them. No; I don't recollect the name. Odd one, though."

"We haven't met him yet. I believe he's somewhere in Yucatan. She hasn't seen him in ages. I never heard of a daughter worshiping a father the way this girl does. It makes me feel little and small when she begins to talk about him. My general impression regarding archeologists hasn't been complimentary. I've always pictured them as withered, dried-up things with huge glasses. But Mr. Athelstone is one of the handsomest men I've ever seen. She has shown me his photograph. It must have been taken before she was born, when he was somewhere in the late twenties. Anyhow, no novelist ever conjured a hero to match up with her father, from her point of view."