“You won’t feel the cold the first winter in the States.”
That was what people in Manila and Porto Rico had told Ross. He thought of those people now. You didn’t feel it, did you? Yes, you did!
He had found “some place where he could hide and watch the front door”; a plantation of firs halfway between the house and the gates. He had been there more than an hour, prowling up and down behind the screen of branches; he had at first tried to smoke, but darkness and cold annihilated any sort of zest in the tobacco. He had attempted the army setting-up exercises, considerably hampered by his overcoat; but nothing produced in him either bodily warmth or a patient serenity of mind.
He was worried about that child. Not once did he say to himself that it was none of his business; he admitted willingly that a creature of that size had a claim upon all full-grown persons; he admitted that, whoever it was, and wherever it came from, it was entitled to his protection.
“She’s too little to be left there alone,” he thought. “Much too little. They always have nurses—or some one. She might fall down the stairs—or turn on the gas stove. I’ve been gone more than an hour. Good Lord! This is too much! What the devil’s the matter with that fellow, anyhow?”
He was disgusted with this thin dark man with a mustache, who was so outrageously late in coming. Very likely the funny little doll was sitting up there, crying. The raw cold pierced to the marrow of his bones.
And this, he reflected, was his second night in his native land. The first had been spent imprisoned in the garage, at the point of a revolver, but it had been a thousand times better than this. He had been warm and comfortable—and he had been innocent, a victim. Now he was taking an active part in a thoroughly discreditable affair.
He was committed to wait for a thin dark man with a mustache, and to prevent his entering the house. And how was he to do this? Walk up to him and begin to expostulate? Try to bribe him?
The thought of bribery aroused in the young man an anger which almost made him warm. No Ross would ever pay blackmail. Indeed, no Ross of his branch was fond of parting with money for any purpose at all. They were very prompt in paying their just bills and debts, but they took care that these should be moderate.
“No!” thought Ross. “If I was fool enough to give this fellow money, he’d only come back for more, later on. I’m not going to start that. No! But how am I going to stop him? Knock him out? That’s all very well, but suppose he knocked me out? Or he may carry a gun. Of course, I suppose I could come up behind him and crack him over the head with a rock. That’s what my Cousin Amy would appreciate. But somehow it doesn’t appeal to me. After all, what have I got against this fellow? What do I know about him? Only what she’s told me. And she’s not what you’d call overparticular with her words.”
His thoughts were off, then, upon the track of that problem which obsessed him. What had happened to the man under the sofa? He couldn’t still be there. But who had taken him away, and where was he now? He looked toward the house, so solid and dignified, with its façade of lighted windows. He remembered his cozy dinner in the kitchen; he thought of the orderly life going on there.
It was impossible! Yet it was true. He had seen that dead man with his own eyes. He had touched him.
Who else knew? Surely Amy; but it was obvious that she had some one to help her in all emergencies. Mrs. Jones? Ross believed that Mrs. Jones had been well aware of the man’s presence in her room. Eddy? Eddy’s behavior had been highly suspicious.
He refused to go on with this profitless and exasperating train of thought. He was sick of the whole thing. Amy had said that she would “explain everything” to him the next day. Not for a moment did he believe that she would do anything of the sort, but he did hope that at least she would tell him a little. And, anyhow, whatever she told him, whatever happened or did not happen, he was going away—back to normal, honest, decent life.
“I said I’d help her, and, by Heaven, I am!” he thought. “After tonight we’re quits. I’ll hold my tongue about all this; but—I’m going!”
He whacked his stiff arms across his chest.
“Hotel Benderly, West Seventy-Seventh Street,” he said to himself. “I’m going there tomorrow.”
For he no longer saw Phyllis Barron as a danger. He was considerably less infatuated with liberty after these two days. It occurred to him, now, that to be entirely free meant to be entirely alone, and that to be without a friend was not good.
He wanted some one to trust, and he trusted Phyllis. No matter that he had known her only five days; he had seen that she was honest; that she was steadfast, and, loveliest virtue of all, she was self-controlled. He knew that from her one need never dread tears, fury, despairs, selfishness and cajoleries.
Out there, in the cold and dark of his unhappy vigil, he thought of Phyllis, and longed for her smile.
“She’d never in her life get a fellow into a mess like this!” he thought. “But Amy—”
His distrust for his Cousin Amy was without limits. There was nothing, he thought, that she might not do. She was perfectly capable of forgetting all about him, and then, in the morning, if he were found frozen to death at his post, she would pretend to wonder what on earth the new chauffeur had been doing out there.
“After eleven,” he thought. “And Eddy hasn’t come yet. Very likely she knew he wouldn’t come. Perhaps he’s never coming back. All right! I’ll wait till twelve, and then I’m going to take a look at that little kid. I’ve got to. It’s too little.”
So he walked up and down, up and down, over the rough, frozen patch of ground behind the fir trees; his coat collar turned up, his soft hat pulled low over his eyes, his face grim and dour; a sinister figure he would have been to meet on a lonely road.
Up and down—and then something happened. At first he could not grasp what it was, only that in some way his world had changed. He stopped short, every nerve alert. Then he realized that it was a sudden increase in the darkness, and, turning toward the house, he saw the lights there going out, one by one.
“By George!” he thought. “They’re all going to bed! And I suppose I can stay here all night, eh? While they’re warm and snug, the faithful Cousin James will be on guard. All right! I said I’d do it. But I’m going to get a glass of milk for that baby.”
He set off as fast as his numb feet and stiff legs would carry him, toward the back door. He would tell the cook that he was hungry, and she would give him what he wanted. A kind, sensible woman, that cook.
He pushed open the back door and went in; it was dark in the passage, but warm, and the entrancing perfumes of the great dinner still lingered there. He went on, toward the kitchen, but before he got there, the swing door opened, and Mrs. Jones appeared. She stopped, and he thought that she whispered: “It’s I!”
He was a little disconcerted, because he knew that Mrs. Jones was not fond of him, and he was extremely suspicious of her. But she looked so sedate, almost venerable, standing there in the lighted doorway, in her best black dress, with her gray hair, her spectacles. He took off his hat, and spoke to her civilly.
“I came to ask for a glass of milk,” he said.
Then she repeated what she had said before, and it was not “It’s I,” but the word “Spy!” uttered with a suppressed scorn that startled him.
“Spy!” she said. “I know you!”
He looked at her in stern amazement.
“Leave this house!” she said. “You can deceive a poor innocent young girl, but you can’t deceive me. You and your glass of milk! I know you! And I tell you straight to your face that you’re not coming one step farther. I’m going to stay here all night, and I’m going to see to it that neither you nor anybody else comes to worry and torment that poor girl. Go!”
“All right!” said Ross, briefly, and, turning on his heel, went out of the house.
“If she’s going to take over the job of watchdog, she’s welcome to it,” he thought. “I guess she’d be pretty good at that sort of thing. But—spy!”
His face grew hot.
“I don’t feel inclined to swallow that,” he said to himself, deliberately. “Some day we’ll have a reckoning, Mrs. Jones!”