K

CHAPTER XXVI

Max had rallied well, and things looked bright for him. His patient did not need him, but K. was anxious to find Joe; so he telephoned the gas office and got a day off. The sordid little tragedy was easy to reconstruct, except that, like Joe, K. did not believe in the innocence of the excursion to Schwitter's. His spirit was heavy with the conviction that he had saved Wilson to make Sidney ultimately wretched.

For the present, at least, K.'s revealed identity was safe. Hospitals keep their secrets well. And it is doubtful if the Street would have been greatly concerned even had it known. It had never heard of Edwardes, of the Edwardes clinic or the Edwardes operation. Its medical knowledge comprised the two Wilsons and the osteopath around the corner. When, as would happen soon, it learned of Max Wilson's injury, it would be more concerned with his chances of recovery than with the manner of it. That was as it should be.

But Joe's affair with Sidney had been the talk of the neighborhood. If the boy disappeared, a scandal would be inevitable. Twenty people had seen him at Schwitter's and would know him again.

To save Joe, then, was K.'s first care.

At first it seemed as if the boy had frustrated him. He had not been home all night. Christine, waylaying K. in the little hall, told him that. “Mrs. Drummond was here,” she said. “She is almost frantic. She says Joe has not been home all night. She says he looks up to you, and she thought if you could find him and would talk to him—”

“Joe was with me last night. We had supper at the White Springs Hotel. Tell Mrs. Drummond he was in good spirits, and that she's not to worry. I feel sure she will hear from him to-day. Something went wrong with his car, perhaps, after he left me.”

He bathed and shaved hurriedly. Katie brought his coffee to his room, and he drank it standing. He was working out a theory about the boy. Beyond Schwitter's the highroad stretched, broad and inviting, across the State. Either he would have gone that way, his little car eating up the miles all that night, or—K. would not formulate his fear of what might have happened, even to himself.

As he went down the Street, he saw Mrs. McKee in her doorway, with a little knot of people around her. The Street was getting the night's news.

He rented a car at a local garage, and drove himself out into the country. He was not minded to have any eyes on him that day. He went to Schwitter's first. Schwitter himself was not in sight. Bill was scrubbing the porch, and a farmhand was gathering bottles from the grass into a box. The dead lanterns swung in the morning air, and from back on the hill came the staccato sounds of a reaping-machine.

“Where's Schwitter?”

“At the barn with the missus. Got a boy back there.”

Bill grinned. He recognized K., and, mopping dry a part of the porch, shoved a chair on it.

“Sit down. Well, how's the man who got his last night? Dead?”

“No.”

“County detectives were here bright and early. After the lady's husband. I guess we lose our license over this.”

“What does Schwitter say?”

“Oh, him!” Bill's tone was full of disgust. “He hopes we do. He hates the place. Only man I ever knew that hated money. That's what this house is—money.”

“Bill, did you see the man who fired that shot last night?”

A sort of haze came over Bill's face, as if he had dropped a curtain before his eyes. But his reply came promptly:

“Surest thing in the world. Close to him as you are to me. Dark man, about thirty, small mustache—”

“Bill, you're lying, and I know it. Where is he?”

The barkeeper kept his head, but his color changed.

“I don't know anything about him.” He thrust his mop into the pail. K. rose.

“Does Schwitter know?”

“He doesn't know nothing. He's been out at the barn all night.”

The farmhand had filled his box and disappeared around the corner of the house. K. put his hand on Bill's shirt-sleeved arm.

“We've got to get him away from here, Bill.”

“Get who away?”

“You know. The county men may come back to search the premises.”

“How do I know you aren't one of them?”

“I guess you know I'm not. He's a friend of mine. As a matter of fact, I followed him here; but I was too late. Did he take the revolver away with him?”

“I took it from him. It's under the bar.”

“Get it for me.”

In sheer relief, K.'s spirits rose. After all, it was a good world: Tillie with her baby in her arms; Wilson conscious and rallying; Joe safe, and, without the revolver, secure from his own remorse. Other things there were, too—the feel of Sidney's inert body in his arms, the way she had turned to him in trouble. It was not what he wanted, this last, but it was worth while. The reaping-machine was in sight now; it had stopped on the hillside. The men were drinking out of a bucket that flashed in the sun.

There was one thing wrong. What had come over Wilson, to do so reckless a thing? K., who was a one-woman man, could not explain it.

From inside the bar Bill took a careful survey of Le Moyne. He noted his tall figure and shabby suit, the slight stoop, the hair graying over his ears. Barkeepers know men: that's a part of the job. After his survey he went behind the bar and got the revolver from under an overturned pail.

K. thrust it into his pocket.

“Now,” he said quietly, “where is he?”

“In my room—top of the house.”

K. followed Bill up the stairs. He remembered the day when he had sat waiting in the parlor, and had heard Tillie's slow step coming down. And last night he himself had carried down Wilson's unconscious figure. Surely the wages of sin were wretchedness and misery. None of it paid. No one got away with it.

The room under the eaves was stifling. An unmade bed stood in a corner. From nails in the rafters hung Bill's holiday wardrobe. A tin cup and a cracked pitcher of spring water stood on the window-sill.

Joe was sitting in the corner farthest from the window. When the door swung open, he looked up. He showed no interest on seeing K., who had to stoop to enter the low room.

“Hello, Joe.”

“I thought you were the police.”

“Not much. Open that window, Bill. This place is stifling.”

“Is he dead?”

“No, indeed.”

“I wish I'd killed him!”

“Oh, no, you don't. You're damned glad you didn't, and so am I.”

“What will they do with me?”

“Nothing until they find you. I came to talk about that. They'd better not find you.”

“Huh!”

“It's easier than it sounds.”

K. sat down on the bed.

“If I only had some money!” he said. “But never mind about that, Joe; I'll get some.”

Loud calls from below took Bill out of the room. As he closed the door behind him, K.'s voice took on a new tone: “Joe, why did you do it?”

“You know.”

“You saw him with somebody at the White Springs, and followed them?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who was with him?”

“Yes, and so do you. Don't go into that. I did it, and I'll stand by it.”

“Has it occurred to you that you made a mistake?”

“Go and tell that to somebody who'll believe you!” he sneered. “They came here and took a room. I met him coming out of it. I'd do it again if I had a chance, and do it better.”

“It was not Sidney.”

“Aw, chuck it!”

“It's a fact. I got here not two minutes after you left. The girl was still there. It was some one else. Sidney was not out of the hospital last night. She attended a lecture, and then an operation.”

Joe listened. It was undoubtedly a relief to him to know that it had not been Sidney; but if K. expected any remorse, he did not get it.

“If he is that sort, he deserves what he got,” said the boy grimly.

And K. had no reply. But Joe was glad to talk. The hours he had spent alone in the little room had been very bitter, and preceded by a time that he shuddered to remember. K. got it by degrees—his descent of the staircase, leaving Wilson lying on the landing above; his resolve to walk back and surrender himself at Schwitter's, so that there could be no mistake as to who had committed the crime.

“I intended to write a confession and then shoot myself,” he told K. “But the barkeeper got my gun out of my pocket. And—”

After a pause: “Does she know who did it?”

“Sidney? No.”

“Then, if he gets better, she'll marry him anyhow.”

“Possibly. That's not up to us, Joe. The thing we've got to do is to hush the thing up, and get you away.”

“I'd go to Cuba, but I haven't the money.”

K. rose. “I think I can get it.”

He turned in the doorway.

“Sidney need never know who did it.”

“I'm not ashamed of it.” But his face showed relief.

There are times when some cataclysm tears down the walls of reserve between men. That time had come for Joe, and to a lesser extent for K. The boy rose and followed him to the door.

“Why don't you tell her the whole thing?—the whole filthy story?” he asked. “She'd never look at him again. You're crazy about her. I haven't got a chance. It would give you one.”

“I want her, God knows!” said K. “But not that way, boy.”

Schwitter had taken in five hundred dollars the previous day.

“Five hundred gross,” the little man hastened to explain. “But you're right, Mr. Le Moyne. And I guess it would please HER. It's going hard with her, just now, that she hasn't any women friends about. It's in the safe, in cash; I haven't had time to take it to the bank.” He seemed to apologize to himself for the unbusinesslike proceeding of lending an entire day's gross receipts on no security. “It's better to get him away, of course. It's good business. I have tried to have an orderly place. If they arrest him here—”

His voice trailed off. He had come a far way from the day he had walked down the Street, and eyed its poplars with appraising eyes—a far way. Now he had a son, and the child's mother looked at him with tragic eyes. It was arranged that K. should go back to town, returning late that night to pick up Joe at a lonely point on the road, and to drive him to a railroad station. But, as it happened, he went back that afternoon.

He had told Schwitter he would be at the hospital, and the message found him there. Wilson was holding his own, conscious now and making a hard fight. The message from Schwitter was very brief:—

“Something has happened, and Tillie wants you. I don't like to trouble you again, but she—wants you.”

K. was rather gray of face by that time, having had no sleep and little food since the day before. But he got into the rented machine again—its rental was running up; he tried to forget it—and turned it toward Hillfoot. But first of all he drove back to the Street, and walked without ringing into Mrs. McKee's.

Neither a year's time nor Mrs. McKee's approaching change of state had altered the “mealing” house. The ticket-punch still lay on the hat-rack in the hall. Through the rusty screen of the back parlor window one viewed the spiraea, still in need of spraying. Mrs. McKee herself was in the pantry, placing one slice of tomato and three small lettuce leaves on each of an interminable succession of plates.

K., who was privileged, walked back.

“I've got a car at the door,” he announced, “and there's nothing so extravagant as an empty seat in an automobile. Will you take a ride?”

Mrs. McKee agreed. Being of the class who believe a boudoir cap the ideal headdress for a motor-car, she apologized for having none.

“If I'd known you were coming I would have borrowed a cap,” she said. “Miss Tripp, third floor front, has a nice one. If you'll take me in my toque—”

K. said he'd take her in her toque, and waited with some anxiety, having not the faintest idea what a toque was. He was not without other anxieties. What if the sight of Tillie's baby did not do all that he expected? Good women could be most cruel. And Schwitter had been very vague. But here K. was more sure of himself: the little man's voice had expressed as exactly as words the sense of a bereavement that was not a grief.

He was counting on Mrs. McKee's old fondness for the girl to bring them together. But, as they neared the house with its lanterns and tables, its whitewashed stones outlining the drive, its small upper window behind which Joe was waiting for night, his heart failed him, rather. He had a masculine dislike for meddling, and yet—Mrs. McKee had suddenly seen the name in the wooden arch over the gate: “Schwitter's.”

“I'm not going in there, Mr. Le Moyne.”

“Tillie's not in the house. She's back in the barn.”

“In the barn!”

“She didn't approve of all that went on there, so she moved out. It's very comfortable and clean; it smells of hay. You'd be surprised how nice it is.”

“The like of her!” snorted Mrs. McKee. “She's late with her conscience, I'm thinking.”

“Last night,” K. remarked, hands on the wheel, but car stopped, “she had a child there. It—it's rather like very old times, isn't it? A man-child, Mrs. McKee, not in a manger, of course.”

“What do you want me to do?” Mrs. McKee's tone, which had been fierce at the beginning, ended feebly.

“I want you to go in and visit her, as you would any woman who'd had a new baby and needed a friend. Lie a little—” Mrs. McKee gasped. “Tell her the baby's pretty. Tell her you've been wanting to see her.” His tone was suddenly stern. “Lie a little, for your soul's sake.”

She wavered, and while she wavered he drove her in under the arch with the shameful name, and back to the barn. But there he had the tact to remain in the car, and Mrs. McKee's peace with Tillie was made alone. When, five minutes later, she beckoned him from the door of the barn, her eyes were red.

“Come in, Mr. K.,” she said. “The wife's dead, poor thing. They're going to be married right away.”

The clergyman was coming along the path with Schwitter at his heels. K. entered the barn. At the door to Tillie's room he uncovered his head. The child was asleep at her breast.

The five thousand dollar check from Mr. Lorenz had saved Palmer Howe's credit. On the strength of the deposit, he borrowed a thousand at the bank with which he meant to pay his bills, arrears at the University and Country Clubs, a hundred dollars lost throwing aces with poker dice, and various small obligations of Christine's.

The immediate result of the money was good. He drank nothing for a week, went into the details of the new venture with Christine's father, sat at home with Christine on her balcony in the evenings. With the knowledge that he could pay his debts, he postponed the day. He liked the feeling of a bank account in four figures.

The first evening or two Christine's pleasure in having him there gratified him. He felt kind, magnanimous, almost virtuous. On the third evening he was restless. It occurred to him that his wife was beginning to take his presence as a matter of course. He wanted cold bottled beer. When he found that the ice was out and the beer warm and flat, he was furious.

Christine had been making a fight, although her heart was only half in it. She was resolutely good-humored, ignored the past, dressed for Palmer in the things he liked. They still took their dinners at the Lorenz house up the street. When she saw that the haphazard table service there irritated him, she coaxed her mother into getting a butler.

The Street sniffed at the butler behind his stately back. Secretly and in its heart, it was proud of him. With a half-dozen automobiles, and Christine Howe putting on low neck in the evenings, and now a butler, not to mention Harriet Kennedy's Mimi, it ceased to pride itself on its commonplaceness, ignorant of the fact that in its very lack of affectation had lain its charm.

On the night that Joe shot Max Wilson, Palmer was noticeably restless. He had seen Grace Irving that day for the first time but once since the motor accident. To do him justice, his dissipation of the past few months had not included women.

The girl had a strange fascination for him. Perhaps she typified the care-free days before his marriage; perhaps the attraction was deeper, fundamental. He met her in the street the day before Max Wilson was shot. The sight of her walking sedately along in her shop-girl's black dress had been enough to set his pulses racing. When he saw that she meant to pass him, he fell into step beside her.

“I believe you were going to cut me!”

“I was in a hurry.”

“Still in the store?”

“Yes.” And, after a second's hesitation: “I'm keeping straight, too.”

“How are you getting along?”

“Pretty well. I've had my salary raised.”

“Do you have to walk as fast as this?”

“I said I was in a hurry. Once a week I get off a little early. I—”

He eyed her suspiciously.

“Early! What for?”

“I go to the hospital. The Rosenfeld boy is still there, you know.”

“Oh!”

But a moment later he burst out irritably:—

“That was an accident, Grace. The boy took the chance when he engaged to drive the car. I'm sorry, of course. I dream of the little devil sometimes, lying there. I'll tell you what I'll do,” he added magnanimously. “I'll stop in and talk to Wilson. He ought to have done something before this.”

“The boy's not strong enough yet. I don't think you can do anything for him, unless—”

The monstrous injustice of the thing overcame her. Palmer and she walking about, and the boy lying on his hot bed! She choked.

“Well?”

“He worries about his mother. If you could give her some money, it would help.”

“Money! Good Heavens—I owe everybody.”

“You owe him too, don't you? He'll never walk again.”

“I can't give them ten dollars. I don't see that I'm under any obligation, anyhow. I paid his board for two months in the hospital.”

When she did not acknowledge this generosity,—amounting to forty-eight dollars,—his irritation grew. Her silence was an accusation. Her manner galled him, into the bargain. She was too calm in his presence, too cold. Where she had once palpitated visibly under his warm gaze, she was now self-possessed and quiet. Where it had pleased his pride to think that he had given her up, he found that the shoe was on the other foot.

At the entrance to a side street she stopped.

“I turn off here.”

“May I come and see you sometime?”

“No, please.”

“That's flat, is it?”

“It is, Palmer.”

He swung around savagely and left her.

The next day he drew the thousand dollars from the bank. A good many of his debts he wanted to pay in cash; there was no use putting checks through, with incriminating indorsements. Also, he liked the idea of carrying a roll of money around. The big fellows at the clubs always had a wad and peeled off bills like skin off an onion. He took a couple of drinks to celebrate his approaching immunity from debt.

He played auction bridge that afternoon in a private room at one of the hotels with the three men he had lunched with. Luck seemed to be with him. He won eighty dollars, and thrust it loose in his trousers pocket. Money seemed to bring money! If he could carry the thousand around for a day or so, something pretty good might come of it.

He had been drinking a little all afternoon. When the game was over, he bought drinks to celebrate his victory. The losers treated, too, to show they were no pikers. Palmer was in high spirits. He offered to put up the eighty and throw for it. The losers mentioned dinner and various engagements.

Palmer did not want to go home. Christine would greet him with raised eyebrows. They would eat a stuffy Lorenz dinner, and in the evening Christine would sit in the lamplight and drive him mad with soft music. He wanted lights, noise, the smiles of women. Luck was with him, and he wanted to be happy.

At nine o'clock that night he found Grace. She had moved to a cheap apartment which she shared with two other girls from the store. The others were out. It was his lucky day, surely.

His drunkenness was of the mind, mostly. His muscles were well controlled. The lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth were slightly accentuated, his eyes open a trifle wider than usual. That and a slight paleness of the nostrils were the only evidences of his condition. But Grace knew the signs.

“You can't come in.”

“Of course I'm coming in.”

She retreated before him, her eyes watchful. Men in his condition were apt to be as quick with a blow as with a caress. But, having gained his point, he was amiable.

“Get your things on and come out. We can take in a roof-garden.”

“I've told you I'm not doing that sort of thing.”

He was ugly in a flash.

“You've got somebody else on the string.”

“Honestly, no. There—there has never been anybody else, Palmer.”

He caught her suddenly and jerked her toward him.

“You let me hear of anybody else, and I'll cut the guts out of him!”

He held her for a second, his face black and fierce. Then, slowly and inevitably, he drew her into his arms. He was drunk, and she knew it. But, in the queer loyalty of her class, he was the only man she had cared for. She cared now. She took him for that moment, felt his hot kisses on her mouth, her throat, submitted while his rather brutal hands bruised her arms in fierce caresses. Then she put him from her resolutely.

“Now you're going.”

“The hell I'm going!”

But he was less steady than he had been. The heat of the little flat brought more blood to his head. He wavered as he stood just inside the door.

“You must go back to your wife.”

“She doesn't want me. She's in love with a fellow at the house.”

“Palmer, hush!”

“Lemme come in and sit down, won't you?”

She let him pass her into the sitting-room. He dropped into a chair.

“You've turned me down, and now Christine—she thinks I don't know. I'm no fool; I see a lot of things. I'm no good. I know that I've made her miserable. But I made a merry little hell for you too, and you don't kick about it.”

“You know that.”

She was watching him gravely. She had never seen him just like this. Nothing else, perhaps, could have shown her so well what a broken reed he was.

“I got you in wrong. You were a good girl before I knew you. You're a good girl now. I'm not going to do you any harm, I swear it. I only wanted to take you out for a good time. I've got money. Look here!” He drew out the roll of bills and showed it to her. Her eyes opened wide. She had never known him to have much money.

“Lots more where that comes from.”

A new look flashed into her eyes, not cupidity, but purpose.

She was instantly cunning.

“Aren't you going to give me some of that?”

“What for?”

“I—I want some clothes.”

The very drunk have the intuition sometimes of savages or brute beasts.

“You lie.”

“I want it for Johnny Rosenfeld.”

He thrust it back into his pocket, but his hand retained its grasp of it.

“That's it,” he complained. “Don't lemme be happy for a minute! Throw it all up to me!”

“You give me that for the Rosenfeld boy, and I'll go out with you.”

“If I give you all that, I won't have any money to go out with!”

But his eyes were wavering. She could see victory.

“Take off enough for the evening.”

But he drew himself up.

“I'm no piker,” he said largely. “Whole hog or nothing. Take it.”

He held it out to her, and from another pocket produced the eighty dollars, in crushed and wrinkled notes.

“It's my lucky day,” he said thickly. “Plenty more where this came from. Do anything for you. Give it to the little devil. I—” He yawned. “God, this place is hot!”

His head dropped back on his chair; he propped his sagging legs on a stool. She knew him—knew that he would sleep almost all night. She would have to make up something to tell the other girls; but no matter—she could attend to that later.

She had never had a thousand dollars in her hands before. It seemed smaller than that amount. Perhaps he had lied to her. She paused, in pinning on her hat, to count the bills. It was all there.