Читать книгу Seibert of the Island - Gordon Ray Young - Страница 6

Outside fog-dimmed gaslights spotted the street, and the yellow flames burned dispiritedly under their glass housings.

McGuire cut across Pacific Street, then hurried along a narrow alley into which rickety stairs opened, with faint blots of light lying at the entrance-ways. Behind half-opened street doors women's figures stood with motionless patience. He went along swiftly, but lonely watchers from the doorways glimpsed his shadowed passing, and called to him with quick words.

He went on, twisting and turning through the blurring fog-haze. On the outskirts of the coast—Barbary Coast—within sound of St. Mary's bells, also within sound of the jingle-banging music from gay houses, he turned up a low flight of broad stone steps and pushed at an oaken door, broad and barred with iron hinges, studded by nail-heads, as if to keep out feudal raiders.

The house had been originally built for a lucky miner, who wanted plenty of breathing-space in his rooms and halls. Like other houses near by that had formerly been pretentious, it had fallen into a bad state financially. A shade too close to a wholly respectable neighbourhood to be used as yet by avowed sinners, it was far nearer the bad ones of the city than could be lived in by those who wished to appear good; and so, for all of its remnants of grandeur, it had become a sort of second-class rooming-house, much used by officers and masters of ships—fellows who seldom care a rap for what landmen think of their goodness or badness.

McGuire entered into a hall—once a reception-hall; now nothing but unprofitable space in a rooming-house. Stairs wide enough for three people to have climbed arm in arm came down with a slow turn into the hall. The chandelier that hung from the lofty ceiling was as big as a small pine-tree, but it had been denuded of the glassy splendour and shimmering twinkle that once had made the spacious entrance and stairs festive. One thriftily low-turned jet burned at a tip of a bare iron branch. The deep, empty hall disappeared into a gloom from which strange shapes, ghost-like, might well have emerged in the silence that was like an incantation.

Daylight, as truth too often does, showed that the interior was shabby, cold, chill with meagreness. Old heavy wood in wainscotting was dulled and lifeless from damp that was never reached by sunlight, never driven away by heat. Some of the original furniture had been left, and such of this as had been covered with plush now exposed the burlap-like lining.

McGuire went up the stairs and into another hall; not so large, but, if possible, more dimly lighted than the one below. At the front room door he paused a moment to fit a key, then, entering, pushed the door behind him.

A jet with no more than a thread's thickness of blue flame burned over a flat-topped table. By rising on tiptoes he could reach the jet; when he turned this the flame came up with a flare, causing the shadows to vanish backwards, as if scattered by fright. They clustered in corners and against a far wall, for the room was very large.

There was a wide grate near the middle of the inner wall, where the miner had wanted a fireplace that would be suitable to the home of one who had slept by camp-fires on the mountain-side. Now the hearth was dirtied with partly-burned and charred papers—handbills, discarded letters, the litter of numberless transients that had come drifting in off the seas and departed, unquestioned.

McGuire bent down to the bottom drawer of the table. With a strong tugging pull he drew it half out. Something made a faint click and clink, like the sleepy rustling of timid things when disturbed in the dark; then the light struck shimmeringly down on a scattered heap of gold coins. He knelt, picking out a few of the smaller coins, which are the less conspicuous when being spent.

Everything that McGuire did was with a quiet, almost a furtive ease; the manner was perhaps lazily smooth rather than furtive, but he always moved quietly, as if he did not like the muscular effort of making a clatter.

Suddenly he looked across his shoulder, staring. Nerves that did not reach his ears had warned him, and he saw that the door had been slightly opened. It had not clicked shut when he pushed it as he came in. A nebulously veiled face was peering through.

He half turned, not rising, but shoving with his knee to close the drawer. It would not close. He stood up, placing himself before it, his hands behind him.

He said with an appearance of bold irritation, "Come in. Come on in if you want, or get out!"

The door opened farther, swinging slowly back.

The woman seemed rather small, but she was heavily wrapped, either against chill or as a disguise; perhaps something of both. She made a dark, indistinct figure in the doorway; there was no break between her dress and the shadows in which she stood. All of her was black except the veil, that was like a mist across her face. That was grey. A tingling of strange perfume reached him.

Slowly, watchfully, she detached herself from the shadows and came into the room. Her attitude was that of both fear and menace, as when one comes upon a thief at work. She demanded, "What are you doing?" but she had no doubt of his thievery.

Said McGuire, almost too smoothly to be convincing: "A fine question—in my own room!"

Through the veil he could see her eyes glisten. She was afraid, much as if she had caught him robbing her own drawers; and her attitude was that of a woman who will defend her own property, no matter with how much fear.

"This isn't your room"—her glance fell and rose from the scattered gold in the open drawer—"you thief!"

If she thought him merely a thief McGuire had nothing to fear from her; so, pleasantly, he asked, "Who do you think lives here, if not I?"

"I know who. You put that money right down. I saw you come. I was waiting for Captain Williams. At first I thought you were——"

A nervous stiffening ran through McGuire's slack, indolently loose pose; and, speaking on the impulse, without thought, he said: "You've made a mistake. Three doors down—to the right—Captain Williams. I don't think he's in, but you might try. If you——"

He broke off, abruptly realising that, whatever else was done, the woman must not be tricked away or frightened off until he had found out what she wanted of Captain Williams.

She regarded him with perplexed intentness. The wrinkling between her eyes was suggested, if not visible, through the grey veil; it could be seen that she was much puzzled, and, not suspecting the depth of McGuire's cunning, she was just about convinced of having made a mistake when he, with the gesture of discarding something, said: "You win. I thought I could fool you. This is his room, but mine, too."

"No, I do not believe that. The door was not quite shut, and I saw——"

Her gloved hand pointed toward the drawer strewn with the colour that makes men mad.

She was hooded, veiled, wore gloves, and was wrapped in a long coat of dark fur. The soft swiftness of her voice, rich, full of colour and depth, stirred up misty memories in him that would not take shape. He was sure that she was a total stranger, even to Williams; otherwise it was likely that she would have recognised McGuire as his shadow.

In fact, no one was supposed to know that Williams was in San Francisco. A man or two knew of a Captain Douglas who had come in off the South Seas with a story of pearls and the need of being financed; but Douglas was not a name to be mistaken for Williams.

McGuire absently took a step from the desk. Instantly she half turned and swung the door closed. It shut with a heavy jar. Then she stood against it, facing him.

"You are wrong. I do belong here."

"It looks like it." Her accusing finger slanted down at the drawer.

Something extremely familiar about her persisted in striking against his senses; it was exasperatingly evasive, and again and again seemed right at the point of being recognised.

With all the frankness that he had, and an almost ostentatious air of laying his cards on the table, he said, "Perhaps I could help you. The captain may not be back to-night."

"I'll wait—thank you."

"But I do belong here. Wait all you like. You'll see. Sit down and——"

As he began to pull a chair toward her, she again backed to the door determinedly. When he left the chair she moved to it, dragged it a few inches more nearly between him and the door, then sat down.

McGuire sagged against an edge of the desk, looking at her, studying her, wanting to make her talk, to feel at ease and talk—say something, anything, that would let him catch a glimmer of what she wanted.

"He doesn't like women, so you had better talk to me."

"Yes, I know. I know all about that. But there are some that he doesn't dislike."

"But always the ones that are pretty. He won't listen to you."

"How gallant!" Her hand touched the veil. He could tell that she was smiling. Without trusting him any more, though perhaps almost convinced that he did belong there, she saw that McGuire was not the sort of person of whom one needed to be afraid.

"But why this time of night? It must be important."

Her tone was quick, spirited. "It is—very."

"Ah!" said McGuire, as if he saw a bit of light. "We have been expecting important news. Hardly thought it would be brought by a woman, but——"

"Oh, but you have not expected the kind of news I bring!"

"How can you know that?"

"Because if you had expected it, you—or Captain Williams; I know nothing of you but what I saw"—she pointed to the drawer—"—would not have waited for me to come, or anyone else!"

"But the skipper and I expect all sorts of things."

"No, not a woman, this time of night!"

"Just give me some idea. I'll tell you whether it is news or not."

"I did not come to tell you. I don't know anything of you."

"You nearly mistook me for—his name isn't Williams, anyway. It's Douglas—Captain Douglas."

"For a moment, yes. It was very dark, and you came to this door. No one would ever take you for Hurricane Williams!"

She was half scornful, somehow, as if with pride in Williams.

"I don't believe you ever saw him. I don't believe you would know him if he came in now—except by the way he would scowl at you."

"Oh, no, he would not scowl at me. Captain Williams and I are old, very old friends—more than friends. When we last parted he kissed me——"

McGuire turned away, waving an indifferent dismissal. This was absurd. She laughed low, gaily, amusedly understanding.

It was more than absurd, this woman's—any woman's—saying that she had been kissed by Hurricane Williams. For years, up and down and in and out of all the odd places of the South and Eastern Seas, McGuire had been at the heels of the outlawed Williams.

She sat in all the self-assurance of unruffled prettiness. The sharp toes of her small feet were crossed. She leaned with chin to fingers, elbow on the chair-arm, and she seemed amused.

She was someone he had never seen, he was sure of that; but everything about her made him feel that he ought to remember something of her—everything except the strange perfume that came as if in invisible smoke-like weavings; for a moment it could be detected by a delicate sting, then was gone.