Читать книгу The Professor's Mystery - Hastings Wells - Страница 10

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I paused at the gate and looked back. In the upper windows lights were showing behind the shades, and now and then a swift shadow passed across the pane. Yet the house was altogether quiet, free within and without from any evidence of the unusual. A waning moon glowed large and distorted through the shrubbery, and from all about rose the sweet breath and innumerable tiny voices of the night, comfortable chirps and rustlings, the creak of frogs and the rasp of an occasional katydid; accentuating by their multiety and smallness the sense of overwhelming peace. As I went on, a quick movement at my feet made me start; then I smiled to recognize the clumsy hurry of a toad; and the incident seemed to point the contrast between the human tension of the last half-hour and the huge normality of the outer world. With every step it grew more difficult for me to believe in the turmoil from which I had come; the strain and secrecy, the troubled voices and the moving lights became fictitious; as the scenes of a sensational story, plausible in the reading, turn to pasteboard and tinsel when we have closed the book. Only the quiet gloom was real, the hush and fresh aroma of ordinary night.

I had anticipated some difficulty in gaining admission to a country inn at such an hour, but as I climbed the hill I was surprised to see it still open and alight; and a glance at my watch deepened my surprise into astonishment. It was not yet midnight, and I had felt that it was at least two or three in the morning. So here was another contrast to add to the sense of unreality; and I entered the low-ceiled and dingy little office feeling like Tennyson's Prince returning from a fight with shadows.

My room was cool and pleasant enough, but sleep and excitement had evaporated my drowsiness and I lay thinking in reminiscent circles, trying in vain to puzzle out some theory that would fit the circumstances of the night. The more I reviewed details, the more they seemed to fly apart from any reasonable association, charged as they were with one mysterious electricity. If some accident or sudden trouble had befallen the house, the nocturnal alarm would be motivated; but what motive would that furnish for driving out the guest? Some unwitting provocation of my own (though I could imagine nothing of the sort) might have made my further presence unbearable; but what of the anxious bustle, the hasty conferences, the errands of the man we had met at the gate? And who was he, by the way, that he should have a latch-key and the airs of intimacy, without being, from what I had observed, an inmate of the house? The fear of infectious disease was the only thing that I could imagine that would explain the immediacy of my expulsion. But if I was the bearer of a plague, why had Lady been allowed to talk with me in the hall? Or if one of themselves had been stricken, why had she denied me for all time, or indeed made any mystery of the matter? Then I remembered her silences during the day, the ring, hidden in her breast, and her hesitation and doubt over asking me to stay the night. Whatever the trouble was, it had cast its shadow before: and I could not rid my mind of the conviction that all these matters must be fitted in, that they must all ultimately find their places in the explanation. At any rate, an explanation was due me, and I meant to have it. Either there had been some foolish mistake or I had been treated outrageously. It was not curiosity, I told myself; the sorrows or the skeletons of this family were no business of mine; but I would know by what right they had ejected me.

Over the telephone next morning, Mr. Tabor was ominously agreeable. "Certainly," he said. "You have a perfect right to the reason. When you have it, I think you will agree that you have no more cause for complaint than you have for remaining in the neighborhood. I will be down at once."

Half an hour later he was seated in my room, polished, choleric, aquiline, a man to be a fierce friend or a difficult enemy. He wasted no time in approaches.

"You ask why you were sent from the house last night. Well, here it is: You have arranged to go to Europe, and are actually on your way there. You see my daughter on a train. You force yourself into her company, presuming upon a very slight acquaintance, and follow her home. You come upon us in such a way that we can hardly avoid receiving you as a guest. Then it develops that you spent two or three hours between here and the station instead of coming straight over; and you arrive after dark. Now, in any case—"

"That's distorted and unjust," I interrupted, "I haven't forced myself upon anybody. Besides, we came home as quickly as possible. The trolley—"

"Well?" he asked, drawing his white brows together.

I had remembered Miss Tabor's version of the accident. "Go on," I said, "let me hear the whole of this first."

"We needn't discuss terms; the facts are that you throw aside your arrangements very conspicuously; that you follow a young lady entirely out of your way; and that you bring her home at an unreasonable hour, after wandering or loitering about the country. In any case this would have been officious and inconsiderate. But in the case of a man with such a past as yours, it might compromise her seriously. To have you staying at the house afterward was out of the question."

This was too much. "What do you mean?" I said. "There's nothing the matter with my past. I've nothing whatever to be ashamed of, and this is the first time in my life I've been accused of any such thing. My university position is proof enough of that. It's a mistake or an infernal slander."

He looked me straight in the eye. "I know more about you, Mr. Crosby, than you were prepared for," he said quietly. "Don't waste time in posturing."

"I beg your pardon," I retorted; "you know nothing about me, but you've said decidedly more than one gentleman can say to another without explaining himself. We're two men together. Be so good as to tell me just what you charge me with."

I had risen from my chair, struggling hard for enough self-control to make my words carry conviction. Mr. Tabor sat unmoved while he deliberately lighted a cigar, watching me over the end of it.

"I have no desire to dig over your life with you," he said, "any more than I have to continue your acquaintance. I came here to tell you why our invitation to you was withdrawn. Well, I've done so; you have an evil reputation. That's all."

"Excuse me, but that isn't all. It isn't true, and—"

"There is just one more point," he went on; "when you arrived, of course none of us realized who you were or how you had come. Later, when we understood the facts, you would not, under ordinary circumstances, have left until this morning. But Mrs. Tabor was so much excited over the matter that I saw fit to relieve her immediately, at the cost of disturbing your sleep. I owe you an apology for that, and for that only."

"Look here, Mr. Tabor," said I, more calmly, "I don't know what you have been told about me, but if it's dishonorable it's a damned lie. Now, I'll wait here while you make any inquiries you like. I'll put you in communication with anybody you choose. And when you've looked me up and are satisfied, I shall expect a very complete apology for this whole matter."

"Thank you," he answered, "I am quite satisfied with my present information. I have no further curiosity. And now perhaps I have taken enough of your time." He rose.

Then I lost my temper. "That's altogether too thin!" I cried. "I'm received as your guest, and then I'm locked into my room. I'm sent away in the middle of the night, and told not to ask why. You explain it on the absurd ground that I'm a disreputable character, and then you won't either specify your charges or investigate them. I believe you are making up the whole story to cover something in your own house; and if you were a younger man I'd have it out of you."

While I was speaking he had turned composedly to pick up his hat and stick. He faced me now without a quiver of the eyes.

"Don't bluster, Mr. Crosby," he said slowly, uncovering the tip of one yellow tooth in the faintest suspicion of a smile, "it isn't any real use. Well, I won't offer to shake hands, but I'll wish you a pleasant summer after you've forgotten this row. Shall I go first?"

If there was anything more to say, I was too angry to think of it. "After you," I said through shut jaws. "Good morning."

I followed him down to the veranda where we went through a comedy of leave-taking for the benefit of the people in the wicker chairs. At the corner of the building, discreet swinging doors gave entrance to the bar; and as Mr. Tabor started down the drive, there came from within a stream of savage gutturals and the squeak and clatter of an over-tilted chair. A stocky fellow in a flannel shirt lurched through the swinging doors and followed him at a clumsy run, cursing in a tangle of English and Italian so rapid and furious that by the ear alone I should have thought half a dozen people were involved. It had the multiplied brilliancy of a virtuoso's piano playing. Of the dispute which followed, the words were indistinguishable; but there was no question that each was threatening the other. The Italian danced and raved and gesticulated, while Mr. Tabor pointed a steady forefinger and retorted in low and frosty monosyllables. And presently the foreigner slouched back into the bar, which immediately filled with babbling bystanders. I followed to find him standing physically with his foot upon the low rail, and metaphorically with his back against the wall. He was the same man that had pursued our trolley-car on the day previous; a medium-sized, stocky, leather-colored rascal in a shiny black suit and blue flannel shirt, with a blue fur upon his face, and blue tattoo-marks on his hairy hands.

Public opinion, led by the bartender, was against him to the point of throwing him out or sending for the police; and his attempts at a defense were rendered unintelligible by volubility and by the strangest mixture of languages I ever heard in my life. Imagine a slightly drunk and thoroughly excited Neapolitan speaking broken English with an Irish brogue, and you may have some faint impression of the effect. His muddy blur of intonations was impossible to follow; and I tried him in Italian, becoming thereby a person of authority and interest. He understood me readily enough, but his own spattering patois gave me a good deal of trouble. By what I could make out, he was a sailor, formerly on ships owned by Mr. Tabor; and Mr. Tabor had discharged him and had kidnapped his wife. This sounded puzzling enough; but I could get nothing else out of him; and my further questions brought forth only angry reiterations and indefinite vows to have justice at any price. Finally I persuaded the bartender to give him one more drink on condition that he went away immediately, and satisfied the crowd with some patched-up story of a hated employer whose resemblance to Mr. Tabor had caused an unfortunate mistake.