Читать книгу The Riddle and the Ring; or, Won by Nerve - Gordon MacLaren - Страница 13

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In the hall of the lodging house, Lawrence stood by the door, holding a crisp yellowback in his hand. Mrs. Kerr was panting up the basement stairs, from which came the odor of cooking cabbage to join the ghosts of a thousand boiled dinners that lingered in the stuffy, airless place.

Barry was not yet used to it. He felt stifled, breathless, almost nauseated, and he longed to get away. He did not look at the ferretlike face of the slovenly woman as he handed her the bill. There was something about her he could not abide.

"Here's your money," he said brusquely. "I am leaving at once."

She grasped the bill, and examined it closely. Then she flashed a swift, sidelong glance at Lawrence. There was something about his face and bearing which she had never seen before, and it aroused her curiosity.

"I ain't got a bit of change in the house," she said, in a very different tone from the one she had used an hour before. "Mebbe you want it to count on this week."

Barry's fingers had closed around the knob.

"You can keep the change," he returned shortly. "I said I was leaving at once. I am not coming back."

"Lord save us!" she gasped. "Don't say that, Mr. Lawrence. Don't say as you're leavin' on account of them hasty words I spoke this mornin'. Fergit it. I'm a lonely widder woman as has to work my fingers to the bone to make both ends meet." Her voice took on a whining tone. "I has to count every penny, an' sometimes I'm most distracted, an' says what I don't mean. You——"

She broke off abruptly as the door slammed, and instantly a venomous expression leaped into her face. Like a flash, she had yanked the door open, and run out on the little stoop, to peer around the corner.

For a moment or two she stood shivering in the cold, her small, close-set eyes fixed intently on the back of the man hurrying toward Ninth Avenue. When he had disappeared she came back into the hall, her face thoughtful.

"Now, what's come to him, I wonder," she muttered, making her way slowly back to the basement stairs. "It's somethin', I'll be bound. I never seen him look that way before. He was excited, too, when he come in before. If I'd had any sense I'd 'a' looked around his room whilst he was out."

An instant later she was pounding up the stairs to the top floor. The door of the hall bedroom was ajar, and, pushing it open, she walked in. For a moment she stood there, her sharp eyes taking in every detail of the miserable place. The scantily covered bed showed signs of having been sat upon, but that was nothing unusual. Most of Mrs. Kerr's lodgers found the bed more comfortable than the straight, hard chair she supplied. The woman noticed something else, however, which brought a swift frown to her face, and made her step quickly forward, and jerk up the cornhusk mattress.

"He's been hiding something away here," she snapped aloud, peering closely at the rusty springs. "I knowed it! What a fool I was not to look before! but who'd 'a' thought it, after the times I've went through his——"

She broke off with a queer, choking sound, and in a second every trace of color had left her face. For a moment she stood as if turned to stone, staring at the floor with a look of utter incredulity in her narrowed eyes. Then, with a guttural sound, half groan, half exclamation of joy, she dropped on her knees and snatched up a crisp twenty-dollar bill that lay under the bed.

"Good Lord!" she gasped.

Stumbling to her feet, she held it out, devouring it with her eyes. Then, fumbling in her dress, she drew forth the money Lawrence had just given her, and compared the two. Both were crisp and new and yellow; both were uncreased, as if they had lain together in the same long wallet or package. And Mrs. Kerr's eyes lit up with a horrible sort of cupidity.

"An' I let him go!" she muttered, through clenched teeth. "I let him step out of the house with his pockets full of dough, leaving a twenty behind he never knowed he'd lost! I'm a dope! But mebbe it ain't too late. Mebbe—— Jim! Jim!"

Her face flushed and mottled, her hands trembling, she flung herself into the hall and down the stairs, calling the name at intervals.

She had reached the second floor, and was panting toward a door in the rear, when it was jerked open, and a man appeared on the threshold.

"Shut your face, you fool!" he snarled. "What're you yowling round like that for? You'll bust yer pipes!"

She caught her breath with a queer gurgle, and, putting out both hands, pushed him back into the room.

"Wait till you see what I found," she gasped. "Wait till you hear——"

Then the door slammed shut, and the sound of her voice ceased abruptly, leaving the hall dark and silent, save only for the rapid, indistinct murmur rising and falling in the room beyond.