After a fortnight of his new life,
Philip took stock of himself and his belongings.
In the first place, then, he owned a new name, taken
bodily from certain documents which he had brought
with him from England. Further, as Mr. Merton
Ware, he was the monthly tenant of a small but not
uncomfortable suite of rooms on the top story of a
residential hotel in the purlieus of Broadway.
He had also, apparently, been a collector of newspapers
of certain dates, all of which contained some such
paragraph as this:
Douglas Romilly, Wealthy
English boot
manufacturer, disappears from
the Waldorf Astoria
hotel. Walks out of
his room within an hour of
Landing and has not
been heard of since. Down
town
haunts searched. Foul play
feared.
Superintendent Shipman declares
himself baffled.
Early on Monday morning, the police of
the city were invited to investigate a case of curious
disappearance. Mr. Douglas Romilly, an English
shoe manufacturer, who travelled out from England
on board the Elletania, arrived at the Waldorf
Hotel at four o’clock on Saturday afternoon
and was shown to the reservation made for him.
Within an hour he was enquired for by several callers,
who were shown to his room without result. The
apartment was found to be empty and nothing has
since been seen or heard of Mr. Romilly. The
room assigned to him, which could only have been
occupied for a few minutes, has been locked up and
the keys handed to the police. A considerable
amount of luggage is in their possession, and certain
documents of a somewhat curious character. From
cables received early this afternoon, it would appear
that the Douglas Romilly Shoe Company, one of the
oldest established firms in England, is in financial
difficulties.
Then there was a paragraph in a paper of later date:
No news of Douglas
Romilly.
The police have been unable to discover
any trace of the missing Englishman. From further
cables to hand, it appears that he was in possession
of a considerable sum of money, which must have
been on his person at the time of disappearance,
and it is alleged that there was also a large amount,
with which he had intended to make purchases for
his business, standing to his credit at a New York
bank. Nothing has since been discovered, however,
amongst his belongings, of the slightest financial
value, nor does any bank in New York admit holding
a credit on behalf of the missing man.
“Perhaps it is time,”
Philip murmured, “that these were destroyed.”
He tore the newspapers into pieces
and threw them into his waste-basket. On his
writing-table were forty or fifty closely written pages
of manuscript. In his pocketbook were sixteen
hundred dollars, and a document indicating a credit
for a very much larger amount at the United Bank of
New York, in favor of Merton Ware and another.
The remainder of his belongings were negligible.
He stood at the window and looked out across the city,
the city into whose labyrinths he was so eager to
penetrate the undiscovered country.
By day and night its voices were in his ears, the
rattle and roar of the overhead railway, the clanging
of the street cars, the heavy traffic, the fainter
but never ceasing foot-fall of the multitudes.
He had sat there before dawn and watched the queer,
pinky-white light steal with ever widening fingers
through the darkness, heard the yawn of the city as
it seemed to shiver and tremble before the battle
of the day. At twilight he had watched the lights
spring up one by one, at first like pin pricks in the
distance, growing and widening until the grotesque
shapes of the buildings from which they sprung had
faded into nothingness, and there was left only a velvet
curtain of strangely-lit stars. At a giddy distance
below he could trace the blaze of Broadway, the blue
lights flashing from the electric wires as the cable
cars rushed back and forth, the red and violet glimmer
of the sky signs. He knew it all so well, by
morning, by noon and night; in rainstorm, storms which
he had watched come up from oceanwards in drifting
clouds of vapour; and in sunshine, clear, brilliant
sunshine, a little hard and austere, to his way of
thinking, and unseasonable.
“A week,” he muttered.
“She said a week. Tonight I will go out.”
He looked at himself in the glass.
He wore no longer the well-cut clothes of Mr. Douglas
Romilly’s Saville Row tailor, but a ready-made
suit of Schmitt & Mayer’s business reach-me-downs,
an American felt hat and square-toed shoes.
“She said a week,” he
repeated. “It’s a fortnight to-day.
I’ll go to the restaurant at the corner.
I must find out for myself what all this noise means,
what the city has to say.”
He turned towards the door and then
stopped short. For almost the first time since
he had taken up his quarters here, the lift had stopped
outside. There was a brief pause, then his bell
rang. For a moment Philip hesitated. Then
he stepped forward and opened the door, looking out
enquiringly at his caller.
“You Mr. Merton Ware?”
He admitted the fact briefly.
His visitor was a young woman dressed in a rather
shabby black indoor dress, over which she wore an apron.
She was without either hat or gloves. Her fingers
were stained with purple copying ink, and her dark
hair was untidily arranged.
“I live two stories down below,”
she announced, handing him a little card. “Miss
Martha Grimes that’s my name typewriter
and stenographer, you see. The waiter who brings
our meals told me he thought you were some way literary,
so I just stepped up to show you my prospectus.
If you’ve any typewriting you want doing, I’m
on the spot, and I don’t know as you’d
get it done much cheaper anywhere else or
better.”
There was nothing particularly ingratiating
about Miss Martha Grimes, but, with the exception
of a coloured waiter, she happened to be the first
human being with whom Philip had exchanged a word for
several days. He felt disinclined to hurry her
away.
“Come in,” he invited,
holding the door open. “So you do typing,
eh? What sort of a machine do you use?”
“Remington,” she answered.
“It’s a bit knocked about a
few of the letters, I mean but I’ve
got some violet ink and I can make a manuscript look
all right. Half a dollar a thousand words, and
a quarter for carbon copies. Of course, if you’d
got a lot of stuff,” she went on, her eyes lighting
hopefully upon the little collection of manuscript
upon his table, “I might quote you a trifle
less.”
He picked up some of his sheets and glanced at them.
“Sooner or later,” he
admitted, “I shall have to have this typed.
It isn’t quite ready yet, though.”
He was struck by the curious little
light of anticipation which somehow changed her face,
and which passed away at his last words. Under
pretence of gathering together some of those loose
pages, he examined her more closely and realised that
he had done her at first scant justice. She was
very thin, and the expression of her face was spoilt
by the discontented curve of her lips. The shape
of her head, however, was good. Her dark hair,
notwithstanding its temporary disarrangement, was of
beautiful quality, and her eyes, though dull and spiritless-looking,
were large and full of subtle promise. He replaced
the sheets of manuscript.
“Sit down for a moment,” he begged.
“I’d rather stand,” she replied.
“Just as you please,”
he assented, smiling. “I was just wondering
what to do about this stuff.”
She hesitated for a moment, then a little sulkily
she seated herself.
“I suppose you think I’m
a pretty forward young person to come up here and
beg for work. I don’t care if you do,”
she went on, swinging her foot back and forth.
“One has to live.”
“I am very pleased that you
came,” he assured her. “It will be
a great convenience to me to have my typing done on
the premises, and although I am afraid there won’t
be much of it, you shall certainly do what there is.”
“Story writer?” she enquired.
“I am only a beginner,”
he told her. “This work I am going to give
you is a play.”
She looked at him with a shade of
commiseration in her face.
“Sickening job, ain’t
it, writing for the stage unless you’ve got some
sort of pull?”
“This is my first effort,” he explained.
“Well, it’s none of my
business,” she said gloomily. “All
I want is the typing of it, only you should see some
of the truck I’ve had! I’ve hated
to send in the bill. Waste of good time and paper!
I don’t suppose yours is like that, but there
ain’t much written that’s any good, anyway.”
“You’re a hopeful young
person, aren’t you?” he remarked, taking
a cigarette from the mantelpiece and lighting it.
“Have one?”
“No, thank you!”
she replied, rising briskly to her feet. “I’m
not that sort that sits about and smokes cigarettes
with strange young men. If you’ll let me
know when that work’s going to be ready, I’ll
send the janitor up for it.”
He smiled deprecatingly.
“You’re not afraid of me, by any chance,
are you?” he asked.
Her eyes glowed with contempt as she looked him up
and down.
“Afraid of you, sir!”
she repeated. “I should say not! I’ve
met all sorts of men and I know something about them.”
“Then sit down again, please,” he begged.
She hesitated for a moment, then subsided
once more unwillingly into the chair.
“Don’t know as I want
to stay up here gossiping,” she remarked.
“You’d much better be getting on with
your work. Give me one of those cigarettes, anyway,”
she added abruptly.
“Do you live in the building?”
he enquired, as he obeyed her behest.
“Two flats below with pop,”
she replied. “He’s a bad actor, very
seldom in work, and he drinks. There are just
the two of us. Now you know as much as is good
for you. You’re English, ain’t you?”
“I am,” Philip admitted.
“Just out, too, by the way you talk.”
“I have been living in Jamaica,”
he told her, “for many years clerk
in an office there.”
“Better have stayed where you
were, I should think, if you’ve come here hoping
to make a living by that sort of stuff.”
“Perhaps you’re right,”
he agreed, “but you see I am here been
here a week or two, in fact.”
“Done much visiting around?” she enquired.
“I’ve scarcely been out,”
he confessed. “You see, I don’t know
the city except from my windows. It’s wonderful
from here after twilight.”
“Think so,” she replied
dully. “It’s a hard, hammering, brazen
sort of place when you’re living in it from
hand to mouth. Not but what we don’t get
along all right,” she added, a little defiantly.
“I’m not grumbling.”
“I am sure you’re not,”
he assented soothingly. “Tell me to-night
I am a little tired of work. I thought of going
out. Be a Good Samaritan and tell me where to
find a restaurant in Broadway, somewhere where crowds
of people go but not what they call a fashionable place.
I want to get some dinner I haven’t
had anything decent to eat for I don’t know how
long and I want to breathe the same atmosphere
as other people.”
She looked at him a little enviously.
“How much do you want to spend?” she asked
bluntly.
“I don’t know that that
really matters very much. I have some money.
Things are more expensive over here, aren’t they?”
“I should go to the New Martin
House,” she advised him, “right at the
corner of this block. It’s real swell, and
they say the food’s wonderful.”
“I could go as I am, I suppose?”
he asked, glancing down at his clothes.
She stared at him wonderingly.
“Say, where did you come from?”
she exclaimed. “You ain’t supposed
to dress yourself out in glad clothes for a Broadway
restaurant, not even the best of them.”
“Have you been to this place yourself?”
he enquired.
“Nope!”
“Come with me,” he invited suddenly.
She arose at once to her feet and
threw the remains of her cigarette into the grate.
“Say, Mr. Ware,” she pronounced,
“I ain’t that sort, and the sooner you
know it the better, especially if I’m going to
do your work. I’ll be going.”
“Look here,” he remonstrated
earnestly, “you don’t seem to understand
me altogether. What do you mean by saying you’re
not that sort?”
“You know well enough,”
she answered defiantly. “I guess you’re
not proposing to give me a supper out of charity,
are you?”
“I am asking you to accompany
me,” he declared, “because I haven’t
spoken to a human being for a week, because I don’t
know a soul in New York, because I’ve got enough
money to pay for two dinners, and because I am fiendishly
lonely.”
She looked at him and it was obvious
that she was more than half convinced. Her brightening
expression transformed her face. She was still
hesitating, but her inclinations were apparent.
“Say, you mean that straight?”
she asked. “You won’t turn around
afterwards and expect a lot of soft sawder because
you’ve bought me a meal?”
“Don’t be a silly little
fool,” he answered good-humouredly. “All
I want from you is to sit by my side and talk, and
tell me what to order.”
Her face suddenly fell.
“No good,” she sighed. “Haven’t
got any clothes.”
“If I am going like this,”
he expostulated, “why can’t you go as you
are? Take your apron off. You’ll be
all right.”
“There’s my black hat
with the ribbon,” she reminded herself.
“It’s no style, and Stella said yesterday
she wouldn’t be seen in a dime show in it.”
“Never you mind about Stella,”
he insisted confidently. “You clap it on
your head and come along.”
She swung towards the door.
“Meet you in the hall in ten
minutes,” she promised. “Can’t
be any quicker. This is your trouble, you know.
I didn’t invite myself.”
Philip opened the door, a civility
which seemed to somewhat embarrass her.
“I shall be waiting for you,” he declared
cheerfully.