Lyon Mearson

“ Suddenly, with a wet sobbing splash, one of the drops struck the candle wick full, extinguishing it instantly, leaving the room and Val in a black, velvet darkness. For an instant or two,—or was it an eternity or two?—he sat there, immovable, his face pale.
There was a sudden, leaping flash of sheet lightning, illuminating the room to the last, farthest corner for a brief instant. At the window toward which Val was looking, he saw something that made his blood run cold.
Framed in the window, a figure from the old world, was the upper part of a man. ”

“ A Certain Vagueness of Memory Inured as Val was to death in all its varied forms, yet there was something about this bald announcement that seemed to catch him in the throat; it was as if an icy hand had suddenly clutched him, a hand reaching out of nowhere, a hand that could drag him from the here into the hereafter.
He had seen men die by his side; for weeks he had looked upon the face of death in the front line trenches. But death was in its proper environment there. One could die in the trenches—that’s what one was there for. It was a fitting culmination to a man’s work in the trenches. ”

“ Val shivered slightly, and made his way into the living room, which opened into the entrance hall.
This was an immense room, and his little light could make but small headway against the encircling gloom that shrouded the walls and corners. He made out, in his first quick glance, that it seemed to be devoid of furniture, with the exception of a kitchen table and a pine chair that stood in the middle of the room. On the table was a tallow candle, half used. He moved forward to examine the table, for no other reason than because he was interested in these signs of recent human habitation. ”

“ Something of all this dragged its way through the consciousness of Jessica as the taxicab bore her speedily back to her little flat—the flat where Ignace Teck awaited her. Happiness, then, was something to be looked at but not to be seized. It is the soap bubble of life, the will-o’-the-wisp of every day. She remembered that in “Alice in Wonderland” Alice was told that they never have jam to-day; they always have it yesterday or to-morrow—never to-day. Happiness, she decided, was close kin to that jam. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hundreds of people crowded in front of the hotel, watching it burning. It was said on authority that everyone seemed to be out, and that being the case, Val and Eddie returned to their automobile and dressed in haste. Then they returned to the fire, but there was nothing to do but watch. No human agency could stop that devouring monster of flame, though the firemen worked like diminutive, foreshortened demons against it, scurrying here and there, all but being caught under the fall of some wall or column, even darting inside the red hot walls where they thought some human might be penned. ”

“ At dinner time they drew up in front of Val’s home, tired though not discouraged. Chong had dinner ready in a few minutes, and Eddie became once more the impassive servant waiting on his master at table.
Val ate in silence for a long time, thinking over the surprising events of the day and planning a course of action. The tang of the chase was keen in him; his blood was beginning to course warm with the joy of the hunt. He was looking for a woman; not a woman—the woman. What was there on earth that a man could search for more precious than the one woman? ”

“ Yet it was not so with Val.
One thought only was in his mind, and that is the thought that he was dying, while in the next room two men waited to enter and drag out his body when all was over. He felt himself getting weaker and weaker, and he knew it was but a question of minutes. This was the end of Valentine Morley, the man who had wanted to marry Jessica Pomeroy. It was the end of a man who had held life lightly, only to find at the last that he desired life above all things. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Eddie was getting the best of his opponent, forcing him back and down, pounding violently at him with his fists.
Val could feel the muscles of Teck swelling under his arms as they strained backward and forward. This was no mean opponent, with his great weight and his terrible passion. Teck’s face was livid in his anger, and against the pasty skin his scar throbbed and glowed evilly, his mouth sending forth a stream of foul curses. He wrenched an arm loose and started to flick it upwards at Val’s head, but Val had had that done to him once; he was watching for him. ”

“ With a quick movement he was at Eddie’s side, assisting him.
“No—I’ve had my beauty sleep, sir,” replied Eddie.
Val turned the light on his face. He was a ghastly figure, with his face streaked with blood from a deep, ugly gash over his right eye. Evidently he had fallen immediately over a large crack in the floor, and it was this freely flowing blood that had put out Val’s flickering candle. The blood was clotted now, though he must have lost rather more of it than a man can conveniently spare. ”

“ Above the boom of the great city downtown, above the noise and the crash of human industry, loomed the stark, silent shaft of the Woolworth Building, dwarfing everything in its vicinity, making the scurrying humans resemble the little ants which they really were, showing by the mere fact of its being how small human lives and human affairs were. It was a magnificent gesture of superiority, reflected Val, as he stepped towards his car.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Pomeroy,” said a sibilant voice at his elbow, ingratiatingly close. ”

“ It was a bright sunny morning, and Val, leaning against the rail of the steamer, with Eddie standing just behind him, enjoyed the sail thoroughly. Chesapeake Bay had never been so sparkling, so calm; and to the right, in the distance, the grim, sullen guns of Fortress Monroe brooded over the Bay and Hampton Roads, powerful, menacing and silent; here and there an impertinent three-inch gun showed its black shield and saucy muzzle. ”

“ Silently, noiselessly, Eddie crept along the hall, for some unknown reason hugging the wall. At the door, of the living room he paused, merging himself with the shadows. For a full minute he listened, hearing nothing. If there had been any one there he would surely have heard something—the sound of breathing, a board creaking underfoot, the soft pad of feet across thick rugs. It is not possible to move about in a room without leaving some trace for the auditory senses, some trail of movement. ”

“ Sounds are comparative things, and the creaking of a board, however slight, is as audible in the stillness of the night as a pistol shot in broad daylight, if one is listening.
Softly Eddie entered the living room. Against the lightened darkness of the window his eye caught the delicate tracery of the lace curtains, not hanging quietly, as was their wont, but blowing inward slightly. He advanced to the window and inspected it. It was open.
He glanced around at the living room, which he could see dimly, now that his eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness. ”

“ Green Eyes That Hypnotize The happiness was effaced from the features of Jessica Pomeroy as a ragged gray cloud wipes out the sun. Gone was her little moment of forgetfulness and returned the ever-present menace. The moments of conscious happiness in the ordinary life are woefully small and few, little glowing incandescent islands entirely surrounded by cares. They are to be seized and held close for their brief stay, because when once they go it is not within the power of man to recreate, to “recapture the first fine careless rapture” that was that instant. ”

“ In an instant the six men in the room were a tangle of striking arms and legs, each fearing to shoot, not knowing which was friend and which was foe. With a fearful, vivid joy, Val and Eddie plunged into the mass, striking, throwing aside, kicking.
Val picked up a cursing body and threw it, knocking down furniture and men. He jumped into the thick of the struggling humans, pounding viciously with his ham-like fist and his revolver butt. At the door the mix-up was thickest. A figure jumped at Eddie. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You are a stranger to Miss Pomeroy—it would be well for you to remain a stranger, and not to mix into affairs that do not concern you in any way.”
“Is this a warning?” asked Val.
The other shrugged his shoulders. “It is anything you choose to make it, my young friend.”
“And if I choose to disregard it⸺”
“Well, we shall see what we shall see, in that event. You are young and healthy—why not remain that way?” He looked at him significantly, his scar glowing in the semi-darkness of the car like a phosphorous gash in his evil face. ”

“ Men don’t do that at all, and women never do unless they don’t mean it. Yet the feeling ran true between these two. Mat typified all of age and the venerable to Val, and on his part Val was youth eternal to Mat—he was all of youth, a sort of a composite picture of all the beauty and fire and dreams in the world. ”

“ Eddie bowed his head respectfully. “Well, if you want information about anybody in the world, a newspaper is the place where you stand the best chance of getting it. If there has ever been a Pomeroy who had a daughter by the name of Jessica—if he has ever had reason to figure in the papers at all—you’ll probably find out what you want in the ‘morgue’ of the Planet. Dessert, sir?”
Val stared at him as though he were a wraith risen from the dead. ”

“ She knew only that Teck considered it of supreme importance that she return at once, and, obeying the fear that was always within her where this man was concerned, she was doing so. Nobody knew the extent of the fear and loathing that the sight of this man Ignace Teck held for her. This was something she held locked in her breast, always remembering that this man had become a loathly object through his devotion to her. He had sacrificed himself for her, and she considered it but just that she should give herself to him. ”

“ Yet how could a man without hands knock him out? He puzzled about this for a little while, and then, his head aching, he had to give it up. For the matter of that, how could a man without hands beat out the brains of poor old Mat Masterson? He couldn’t.
That was where Val ended in his thought about Teck. The man couldn’t do it, of course. But he had done it.
Next to him the candle burned fitfully, almost going out, often, at the sudden draughts from the windows, lighting up the ceiling in quick light and extinguishing it in swift darkness as it leaped and fell. ”

“ When I got upstairs above the living room I saw a body lying on the floor in the dark, and I thought it was you—that was the first thing that occurred to me.” She said this frankly, as though it were quite natural that she should think of him first. “My nerves were all unstrung, with the dark and the storm and the lightning and thunder, and being alone there, and I lost control of them completely for a minute and screamed. That’s the scream you heard. At that moment Ignace and another man seized me and dragged me out. ”

“ It was he whom Val had seen in the lightning, and it was he who had cut Val loose. It was his sibilant whisper of warning Val had heard down the stairs. The young man had seemed to be on the friendly side, but he was unfamiliar with the developments, and he did not wish to take the chance of disclosing himself until he knew exactly what was occurring down here, in his supposed absence. ”

“ Val found himself in the entrance foyer, bare of furniture of any kind, with plaster hanging perilously from the walls and ceiling, his lantern making flickering shadows on the walls and in the comers. He felt something brush his feet, and heard something padding away swiftly in the darkness. Rats! Well, he wasn’t afraid of rats—not after the kind he had known in the trenches. ”

“ Around Val twittered the night life of the countryside, and somewhere in the rear of the house a mandolin rang into being, shattering the night softly with an old sea song, in the quavering voice of old Germinal, who had followed the sea in his youth. ”

“ Peter,’” said Teck, with meaning.
“I say,” said Val, “I’m awfully thirsty—can I have a drink of water?”’ As a matter of fact his tongue and mouth were parched with thirst. He had been a trifle feverish after the blow on the head which he had received, and his throat felt dry as dust. He felt the need of water more than he had ever felt it before.
“Ah, water, to be sure. I’m thirsty myself,” nodded Teck mildly. “O’Hara, bring in a glass of water, will you.”
O’Hara grunted, and in a moment Val heard the sound of running water in the kitchen. ”

“ Lunch was gay. With the advent of Val the girl was able to cast off the blue restraint that had been on her spirit for the last two days, like a filmy pall that hampered without binding. Teck’s influence on her, she noticed, was at its lowest ebb when this new, strangely interesting man was there. ”

“ Fire! The one element of which all animals are instinctively afraid—the element man has harnessed to his own use, and which, sometimes escaping from the bonds, turns on man with deadly, vicious effect.
Fire!
The sound shrieked through the corridors again, and was taken up here and there in different parts of the great hotel. Val was on his feet in an instant, switching on the lights with almost the same motion. From the next room came Eddie, dragging with him his trousers, a sleepy figure in pink silk pajamas and scarcely opened eyes. ”

“ The car, galvanized into sudden and vibrant life beneath him, slid out into the smooth roadway and hummed over the asphalt on its way downtown. Val gave himself up to pleasant meditations. Possibly she was already at the bookshop, having in some miraculous way discovered the loss of the money; maybe she was there with other books.
Surely one of the volumes in Mat’s possession would have her name and address. Of course, her name was Jessica Pomeroy—of that he was certain, though he was willing to admit freely that his grounds for belief in this were not impregnable. ”