The Whisper on the Stair

Front matter

The Whisper on the Stair

illustrationFrontispiece

The feeling that she was not alone took possession of her.

Chapter I

A great mass of a man was Valentine Morley, a collection of sinew and firm flesh, a monolith who towered impressively above the average human to the extent of six feet two. Such a man was made for hand to hand combat, straining flesh against straining flesh, with muscles taut under the smooth skin; such a man was for work with his two hands, wresting a livelihood from a world that was his if he would but go forth and throttle it. That’s the kind of man Valentine Morley looked.

But was he straining any flesh or tightening any muscles? Was he engaged in the business of wresting a livelihood? Not perceptibly. It is simply one of the ironies of the Fates, the stern gods who control the destinies of human kind. The only thing Val Morley was straining at the moment was his eyesight, over the fine print of an old book in the dim recesses of the second hand bookshop kept by old man Masterson on Fourth Avenue from time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.

Valentine Morley did not have to strain a thing. Here were six feet two of manhood, endowed with youth, health, and a dangerous kind of good looks, even to the fascinating cleft in his firm chin—the kind of a man to conquer worlds, if he had to. He did not have to. An industrious and loving parent, now gathered to the bosom of his equally industrious ancestors, had generously left him more millions than there were letters in his illustrious name.

In a desultory fashion, now, Val was engaged in riding his old hobby. He was an amateur of books and bindings, and more of an expert than his careless attitude toward them might indicate. The old zest, however, was gone from the pursuit, much as it had departed from almost every walk of life for Val, since he had returned from his two years as a private in France. His body had returned, but there was something of Val that would always be in France; perhaps it was his former naïve enjoyment in the little things that make up a life and a world.

Nothing nowadays seemed to matter much; his life for the past two years had been so filled with great things that he could not now get himself oriented to the irritating atoms of daily routine. His spirit craved much more than living the usual grind; he rather needed something to bring him out of himself. Bindings could not seem to do it, even the imitation he held in his hand, which was so good an imitation that many an expert would have been deceived. He turned irritably to the old man, Masterson.

“How come you got stuck on this Bauzonnet, Mat?” he inquired. The old man removed his double eyeglasses and looked at him slowly.

“I didn’t,” he said at length. “It’s a copy—that’s all I paid for.” He turned back to his work, that of meticulously putting a small spot of book paste on the broken binding of a copy of The Duchess.

“Good piece of work,” approved Val, secretly pleased with himself for not having been deceived in the binding. It was a good piece of work; a dark blue morocco affair, gold tooled, with a coat of arms in the center, inlaid with red morocco. It was a rather gorgeous piece of work.

There was silence for a space, the crusty old bookseller seemingly intent on nothing but his work. He spoke at last, without turning; it was as if he were talking to the book in his hands, or to himself.

“People are like that,” he said. “At least, the people who drift in here—and most people do get in here at some time or other.”

“How do you mean?” asked Val, turning.

“Why, imitations,” he replied, shortly, as if annoyed that so plain a point should have been missed.

“There are lots of them. Beautiful and expensive—on the outside. They look like the real thing. Face and expression and manner and clothes. Inside they are—copies. Just imitation, that’s all.” He turned definitely to his work, dismissing the subject.

“Not referring to me, or anything like that?” smiled Val, but there was no answer. He knew, of course, that there was no reference to him. He and Masterson had been friends ever since Val had left college. He understood the cranky old bookseller better than perhaps any one else in the world, with the possible exception of Sam Peters, Masterson’s old clerk, who was at present engaged in ponderously moving the sidewalk book racks into the store, preparatory to closing up for the night.

It was getting late, and one by one the street lights and the softer lights in office and residence windows flared into life, throwing the sidewalk in front into blacker relief. Masterson moved around creakily, lighting the antiquated gas jets in his store. He had never had electric lights installed—the ramshackle old building was not wired for electricity, and his store seldom was open in the evening.

A shadow halted at the door for a moment, hesitated, descended the steps and came in. Val looked up from his book. Even in the uncertain light he could see that there was a presence there—something out of the ordinary—a girl to be remembered. The mark of breeding was on her troubled face and on the garments she wore.

Her features were small and regular, with the flnest, wispiest tendrils of hair escaping from under her toque that you ever saw. Her finely modeled chin had a coquettishly determined cast to it that bespoke—along with the nose that barely hinted at being retroussé—a temper that was not always kept under the firmest control. The big, lustrous eyes were shaded by miraculously long, silky lashes that cast a shadow over dark eyes, pools at midnight under the moon. She was below medium height, with hands and feet that were almost ridiculously small to be used for the purpose of supporting a human body, and when she spoke the dimples in her fine cheeks came and went ravishingly. All this Val noted from his corner, approvingly. He shut the book.

He noticed her clothes, too. Quiet and in good taste, with the simple lines that betoken numerous dollars spent with modistes. She was expensively dressed, as even Val’s superlatively male eyes could discern at a glance. In each hand she held a bundle of books bound by a strap such as school children use for their school books, ten or a dozen in each bundle. Quite a heavy burden for so slight a girl, and he noted that she put them down with relief.

All this he noted before old Masterson looked up—she was standing in front of him at the desk. She flashed a quick glance at Val in his corner, and back at Masterson. Val could see that she was nervous and ill at ease. There was agitation in her manner and a look in her eyes that he could hardly classify—could it have been fear? It seemed to him uncommonly like it, in that instant’s glance at him. He had managed to see into her eyes then, before they were again shaded by her wonderful fringed lashes.

“Do—do you buy books here?” she asked Masterson. Her voice seemed cold and calm enough to Val. Perhaps it was imagination on his part.

“Why, occasionally, my child,” said Masterson, creaking to his feet.

“I have some here⸺” she motioned to her erstwhile burden with an inclusive sweep of her small gloved hand.

“Well, I don’t think I care for any, to-day,” he said, and added kindly, “You see, I have more books now than I like to carry, so I’m not buying for a while.”

She showed her disappointment.

“But these are very good books, sir,” she protested. “I’m sure you’ll like them, if you’ll only look at them. I was told that you are always in the market⸺”

“Not now, my child,” he interrupted, turning again to his work, not unkindly, but definitely. She stood there, looking at him almost helplessly.

“If you would only give me—say, ten dollars for them⸺” she faltered.

“Impossible,” he said, without looking. “I never pay ten dollars for books—and besides, I don’t need them. I have too many as it is. No doubt they are worth it.” He went on pasting.

“Won’t you give me something for them,” she pleaded, and there was agitation in her tone.

“Sam!” called Masterson to his assistant, still without looking up. “See how much money is in the cash register.”

“Two dollars and thirteen cents, Mr. Masterson,” replied Peters, after a glance, “You made a deposit to-day.”

He looked at the young woman inquiringly.

“Two dollars and thirteen cents,” she murmured, repeating it after him monotonously.

“If that will be of any use to you—” he deprecated.

“Yes, I’ll take it,” she said swiftly. The money was passed over in silence and she went out immediately, leaving the books behind her. The old man turned again to his work. Val Morley sauntered out from his corner.

“Mat,” he said, “you’re an abominable old profiteer, and you’ll come to no good end.” There was no answer. It was as if the bookseller had not even heard.

“I hope, when you die and go to Purgatory, as you surely will,” continued the young man, “that you’ll be condemned to read Harold Bell Wright and Ouida through all eternity, world without end, and have nothing to smoke but cubeb cigarettes and nothing to drink but celery tonic.”

“My boy,” answered the bookseller, “Wright amuses me and Ouida still thrills me and cubeb cigarettes are good for a cold. As for celery tonic, you’ll be glad of even that to quench your thirst, where you’re going. You didn’t suppose I make my living by giving people as much money for their books as they are worth, did you? Anyway, I really didn’t want any more books, and these are probably not worth more. Bemember what I told you about imitations.”

“This girl’s no imitation,” flashed back the young man. “She’s the real thing.”

“And yet—she wants two dollars and thirteen cents badly enough to give up two packages of books for them—with all those expensive clothes on her back.”

“Now that you mention her back, it adorable, wasn’t it? By jingo, that was rather queer, wasn’t it?” Val murmured, more to himself than to his friend, the bookseller.

He pondered this, for awhile. It interested him, and anything that interested him these days was distinctly worth thinking about. It isn’t good to be jaded with life at thirty; life should still have a sparkle; a bubble. Here was a beautiful girl, really beautiful, with breeding, position and money marked in plain signs all over her, who seemed to need a couple of dollars badly enough to agitate her. Surely it was fear—or desperation—he had glimpsed in her eyes in that fleeting glance when their gazes crossed. Here was mystery, then and a beautiful girl a beautiful girl.

“Listen, Shylock,” he said suddenly to Masterson. “Since you’re not so anxious about those books, anyway, I’ll give you a hundred per cent profit.” He took out a five dollar bill. “This for the books—as is.” It had suddenly occurred to him that he might find a clue to the girl’s identity in the books. A bookplate, perhaps. Or an inscription.

“Nonsense. You’re an optimist, my son, the old man answered quietly. “I’ll make much more than that on these books-—without looking.”

“Then I’ll give you five dollars for one of the packages—ten dollars,” he tempted, as he saw denial in the eyes of the bookseller. “It’s a profit—clean velvet—without your even having to open the strap.”

Masterson hesitated for a moment. The young man was right he was a bookseller, and it was his business to make a profit. Val saw victory in his eyes.

“Is it a deal?” he asked.

“You’ve bought that bundle of books,” answered Masterson, pointing to one of them, containing ten or eleven books. “Show me ten dollars.”

Money was passed and the deal consummated.

“Never mind wrapping them up,” said Val. “I’ll just throw them into the car.” His machine was at the door, a flying roadster of an expensive and recent make.

Chapter II

Val’s apartment was in one of the big, expensive, gold plated rabbit warrens which have recently sprung up on Fifth Avenue in the early seventies, opposite Central Park. Coöperative apartment houses, they are called. You pay enough money for a fair sized country estate for the privilege of occupying an apartment for which you have to pay, in addition, a monthly rental that sounds more like a telephone number than a rental amount.

In this apartment was to be found Chong Low, a wizard Chinese cook of bland features and wonderful powers—powers that Savarin himself would not have despised. Here also was to be found Eddie Hughes, Val’s man, who could handle a gun as well as a tailor’s iron, and was equally willing to handle either for his employer. He was a small chap with muscles of chilled steel and the lithe speed of a mountain lion. He smoked when he desired, and he drank, in moderation when he wished, indulging in the former through the simple expedient of taking what smoking material he wished out of the humidors of his employer—and in the latter, similarly, from out the bounty provided in the cellarettes of his employer. Of all of which Val was cognizant; he had given Eddie permission to do this, saying that he would rather have him take these things with his permission than steal them without his permission.

“Tell Chong I’ll eat at seven-thirty—alone,” directed Val. Eddie Hughes touched a match to the dried twigs in the huge living room fireplace, and turned to go. It was early fall and the ruddy glow of the fire, which leaped up instantaneously in the fireplace, was pleasant and comfortable, even in competition with the ample steam sent up from below.

Val seated himself in the big, overstuffed chair that faced the flames and proceeded to inspect his bargain. He loosened the strap that bound the books, and they toppled over in a little heap at his feet.

A cursory examination showed Val nothing remarkable about the books. The bindings were not such as to interest him, and the books themselves were mostly of a mid-Victorian period, with the green silk covers that were such an obsession during that time. There were three or four Dickens, a bit of Thackeray, one Matthew Arnold, and so on.

There was not a name plate in any of the books, though he found a bit of comment here and there, written marginally in a fine, childish hand. The last book he picked up was a King James bible. Here he had better luck. On the fly leaf was the inscription

in the same fine, round hand as the marginal notes.

“Jessica ” he mused before his fire. “Jessica ” he repeated to himself. “A name that connotes something—green fields and all that sort of thing, eh?” The name was connoting more to him at the moment—dimples, flushed velvety cheeks, a skin you love to touch, it fits well around the neck, alone at last, till death do you part, Mrs. Valentine Morley⸺

“Snap out of it!” he commanded himself suddenly, smiling into the fire. “Life isn’t like that, you old fool. You don’t see a girl for one minute one day and marry her the next. Things don’t go as speedily as all that. And yet, those eyelashes! Like deep fringes over a midnight pool⸺”

“Dinner’s ready, sir,” announced Eddie.

In solitary state he made his way into the dining room and seated himself at the table. He attacked his grapefruit. Jessica⸺ There was something about the name he liked instinctively. Even if the name had not been associated with⸺ but then, he found he could no longer dissociate the name from the girl in the book shop.

“Eddie,” he said to his man, “beautiful woman is Nature’s noblest work, eh?”

“Yes, sir. So I have been led to believe, sir.”

“Man is a lonely animal, without woman, isn’t he?”

“Yes, sir; so I have been informed, sir,” replied the impassive Eddie, removing the grapefruit.

“You have—er—never engaged in—er—matrimony, Eddie?”

“No, sir; I think not, sir.”

“Very good, Eddie,” replied his employer.

Why should such a girl want two dollars and thirteen cents? Val gave it up. And yet, if she was in trouble—and anybody who needed two thirteen must be in trouble, Val conceived that it was up to him to give her a lift out of it. Of course, he said to himself, he would go out of his way to help everybody who was in trouble, regardless of how beautiful she was, but—her hair was sort of copper, you know, burnished copper like the old copper pots Grandma Morley used to have. And there had seemed to be lots of it, coils and masses and waves, tumbled and heaped and⸺

“Will you have your coffee here, sir?” asked Eddie.

“Er—yes, surely.”

To-morrow he would go ahunting Jessica Pomeroy—surely, she should not be so hard to find. It was not an ordinary name. She wouldn’t have that, of course. He could go no further into the matter of the books to-night, owing to an appointment for the evening.

It was after one o’clock when he returned, admitted by the apparently sleepless Eddie.

“Go to bed, Eddie,” he said. “Nothing to do till to-morrow.”

“Very good, sir,” replied Eddie, going to his room.

The little pile of books on the floor of the living room reminded him of the riddle of Jessica Pomeroy. Perhaps there was something in them he had overlooked—an address somewhere, perhaps, or He paused in hesitation for a moment.

On an impulse, he gathered up the books and took them to his bedroom with him, to look them over as he lay in bed.

By the light of his bedside lamp he went over each of the books carefully. Nothing. No trace of the identity of the girl with copper hair. He stifled a yawn politely, in deference to the fact that he was, in a way, communicating with a girl—the first one who had interested him since he had returned from France. The last book he picked up was the bible.

“Jessica Pomeroy,” he recited, looking at the school- girl hand. “I wonder he went off into an abstracted lapse. At the head of his table, perhaps, the glint of the shaded lights playing on that hair, the mouth and eyes smiling at him absentmindedly, he thumbed the pages. A glint of yellow and green caught his eye in the pages.

Instantly he was wide awake, interested, turning the pages one by one to find the one so decorated as to stand out from the others. He found the page finally, drawing out from between pages one hundred and ninety nine and two hundred a yellow and green paper, which he examined with interest, giving vent to a long, low whistle of astonishment.

There came a knock on his door, and he started.

“Did you call, sir?” came the voice of Eddie.

“No, go to bed,” he answered, and he heard the patter of retreating footsteps. He turned his attention again to the slip of paper in his hand.

It was a United States Treasury note for ten thousand dollars.

Chapter III

“Now why,” quoth Val, “should this be thus?” He addressed the walls of his comfortable bedroom and paused for reply.

“You don’t know, is that it?” he asked again. “Well, that makes it unanimous. I ask you,” he remarked to himself, “why should the best looking girl in all the world sell a ten thousand dollar bill for the sum of two dollars and thirteen (count ’em) cents?” He paused again for reply. There was none.

“Now we just simply have got to find that girl. We have business with her. Those eyes ”

It was one of the most singular things he had ever known, he reflected. Of course, the girl had no idea the money was in the book—yet why was it there and who had put it there? Evidently she needed money badly. Well, here it was; a large stack of it. And he, Val, had but to search her out and place it in her hand that hand, he had noticed it white and small and that is, place it in her hand, at the same time placing himself on a basis of intimacy with her by the mere fact of his having returned all that money to her.

Although ten thousand dollars was no great sum of money to Valentine Morley, still he could appreciate the fact that, if you needed it, it was a tremen- dous item. He smiled gratefully—it was a trick of the Fates, he decided. Had it not been for that promise of the government to pay anybody who held it ten thousand dollars, he would hardly have been able to dig up a sufficient reason for calling on the girl, always supposing he was fortunate enough to be able to locate her.

Here was his reason and his excuse, thrust right into his hands by the gods themselves. Could anything be more simple? Could anything have happened more fortuitously?

“It could not,” he decided. “And now to see if there are any more.”

A careful search, however, failed to reveal anything else. For a long time he lay there, reviewing the events of the day, and making a plan of campaign. It ought not to be hard to round up all the Pomeroys in New York.

And then there was always old Mat Masterson, the bookseller. He had a bundle of books from the same source—perhaps they held some indication of the erstwhile owner. He would go there the first thing in the morning and look them over. That settled, he extinguished his lamp and sleepily settled himself for slumber. A shaft of yellow moonlight struck through the darkness into his room, touching everything in its strait-ruled path with a wan and sickly gold, deepening the shadows in the corners and under the furniture. He closed his eyes and slept.

His sleep was troubled by dreams, peopled with the ghosts conjured up out of the cobwebs of his imagination. A bloodcurdling, ghostly dance was done around his bed by Eddie Hughes, but not the Eddie Hughes of New York—it was Eddie Hughes as he had known him in France where they had fought side by side. An Eddie Hughes in tin helmet, waving a Springfield with a bloody bayonet attached, the crimson stream pouring from vicious cuts in his face and body, his eyes sightless, blinded hideously by the mustard gas. Val tried to arise in his dream and found he could not—it was as though his limbs no longer refused to obey the commands of his brain. There seemed to be no feeling in them. He felt legless and armless.

Eddie Hughes gave way, finally, to a glorious girl with copper hair, arising out of a pile of books in front of his bed. She advanced to him and placed a cool hand on his brow she smiled. He tried to rise. He could not. She walked back to the books, gliding in an unreal, unnatural fashion and as he looked he saw that it was not the girl at all.

It was a man, a large man, with his back turned. He was bent among the books, clumsily putting them into a pile. The moonlight, which had been absent for a few moments, it seemed to Val, stabbed through the gloom of the chamber again, striking fair upon the person of Val’s dream and as Val looked he felt himself, even in his dream, turning cold all over, the gooseflesh pricking up over his body and the blood seeming to turn to ice in his veins.

The reason his dream-visitor was having trouble with the books was because—Val tried to arise and could not!—because he had no hands.

Where his hands should have been were two formless, pale white stumps.

Val knew he was dreaming, the way you sometimes do know even during the course of a dream, yet for some reason or other, he could hardly say why, he was stricken with a terror that had its inception in nothing of this earth. The sight of that great hulk of an apparition stooping in the weak moonlight, groping among the books on the floor with those two ghastly stumps affected him as nothing this side of France had ever gripped him. He tried to shout and could emit no word. His tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. He could not feel his limbs—he had no command over them—it was as if he were a disembodied spirit.

Then he slept again, dreamlessly and heavily.

When he awoke the sun was high and the air in the room seemed stifling. He had a bad taste in his mouth, which shouldn’t have been there as he had behaved himself meticulously the night before, and there was a suggestion of headache. There was a peculiar smell in the air—he could scarcely classify it. It was something of the hospital. He remembered his dream and smiled.

The door opened and Eddie, who had heard him creaking out of bed, entered.

“Good morning, sir,” he said, and stopped to sniff the air.

“Good morning, Eddie. Do you smell it too.”

“Yes sir. It’s chloroform, sir,” replied Eddie. “Did you leave the airshaft window in the living room open, sir?”

“No, why?”

“I found it open this morning, sir,” replied Eddie impassively.

“That’s strange,” reflected Val. “And chloroform ” He leaped up suddenly. “Why, there was somebody here then, Eddie. That was no dream!”

“No sir. It was no dream, sir.”

“Why, I must have been chloroformed—that’s why I feel like this. And⸺” he stared with wide open eyes at the spot where the books had lain.

They were gone.

Chapter IV

A quick search revealed the fact that nothing else had been taken by the ghostly marauder. Even the ten thousand dollar bill had been left on the bedside table where Val had dropped it after a due examination the night before. Perhaps the burglar had not seen the bill—he had worked with a flashlight, probably, or perhaps no light at all.

They found the marks of a jimmy on the catch of the airshaft window—a living room window only about twelve feet above the street and easy of access to an active man—or easier if there were two men.

By the time the search was completed Val’s headache had gone. His eye was brighter than it had been for many a day. He was interested. Life was beginning to pick up again—there were things happening. At breakfast he conducted one of his usual one-sided conversations with his man.

“Eddie,” he queried, “copper colored hair is beautiful, isn’t it?”

“For them as likes copper colored hair, sir.”

“When you meet the best looking girl in all the world and points adjacent, Eddie, and she carries mystery written all over her—with an appearance of wealth which she belies by accepting two dollars and thirteen cents for two dozen books, and when you take one of those bundles of books home and find that her name is, probably, Jessica Pomeroy, and that there is a ten thousand dollar bill in one of those books which, of course, it will be up to your respected—so to speak—employer to return if he can find the girl, thus making it the basis for a firm and lasting—er—friendship, and lastly, when some visitor oozes in during the wee sma’ hours, perfumes your palpitating bean with chloroform and other pleasing odors, and abstracts aforesaid books, would you say that Life was beginning to be worth living once more?”

“Yes, sir. Another cup of coffee, sir?” replied Eddie, brightly.

“Yes. And Eddie, the name of Jessica Pomeroy is beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. A very tasteful name for a young female person, if I may say so, sir,” came back Eddie. Val looked at him thoughtfully, speculatively.

“Have you ever been in love, Eddie?” he asked at length.

“No, sir. The reason I look as I do, sir, is because I never did quite get all that gas out of my system—you know, that time when we took Neuve Ste. Jean. I⸺”

“Old vaudeville stuff, Eddie. What do you know of the more delicate passions anyway. I want you to drive for me this morning—order the car, will you. I’ll be starting right after breakfast.”

Val attacked another slice of toast with great gusto. Things were beginning to look up—midnight attacks, beautiful girls, ten thousand dollar bills, mystery, love, everything. Perhaps life was not such a dull proposition after all. Who knows, maybe to-day he would be lucky enough to have some one make an attack on his life—or perhaps he would rescue Jessica Pomeroy from some horrible danger that threatened her, or perhaps

He smiled and finished his breakfast. As long as there was a bit of beauty and a bit of fighting left in the world, he would reconsider his determination to leave this old planet flat on its back and find another where things were livelier. And this began to look promising, too. Well, the first think to do was to locate Jessica Pomeroy.

The telephone book was not of much assistance. There was half a column of the name, and they ranged from authors to zither experts, but he found nothing that conjured up the name of Jessica for him. Some of them lived in the Bronx. That let them out, of course, because Jessica would not live in the Bronx. There were some in Brooklyn—they were dismissed for the same reason.