Читать книгу Spring Street - James Hugh Richardson - Страница 6

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The home of the Barton Randolphs, in West Adams street, was one of the old mansions of that exclusive colony toward which the business district of Los Angeles was advancing, block by block. Set back from the street, its immaculate lawn dotted with shade-giving sycamore trees, it was reminiscent of one of the "stately homes of England." An iron fence topped with spear heads gave it a finishing touch of haughtiness.

John liked to think of homes and of trees as people. A stiffly built, sharply roofed house with "gingerbread" trimmings reminded him of a prim old maid. He imagined that he knew what sort of person owned a particular house simply by studying it. Houses, especially old homes, fascinated him and he worshiped trees with the fervor that inspired Joyce Kilmer.

The Barton Randolph home made John think of a fine old aristocrat, holding aloof from the world, conservative and with a love for old fashions and old friends, a contempt for things that are modern. As he stood at the gate he thought that the mansion was glaring at him with an upturned nose and this imaginative quirk caused him to hesitate to enter.

Before him on the cool green lawn moved groups of men and women, the women in snowy white. At intervals there were tea tables around which were couples, chatting languidly. Servants moved with quiet efficiency from the tables to the house and back again. The shade spread by the sycamore trees was pierced with shafts of sunlight that gave the lawn a mottled look. It seemed a place removed from all the world.

Once more John looked at his shabby suit, his dusty, worn shoes. Unconsciously he tugged at his coat tail because of an instinctive fear that the patch was showing. An idea of waiting outside until the fete was over came into his head.

"It can't be any worse than the wallop Battling Rodriguez gave me, so here goes," he said, starting up the finely graveled driveway with the same feeling he always had when he dashed down the beach to plunge into the cold waters of the ocean.

He tramped steadily along until he discovered that the driveway was circular and that if he kept on he would land out on the street again. Boldly he started across the lawn in the direction of the house. Somewhere on the grounds a stringed orchestra was playing. As he passed the tea tables he heard the clinking of ice in glasses. Looking neither to right nor left he felt that the eyes of everyone he passed were upon him. He tugged again at his coat tail.

He saw a servant stop and wait for him and he marched straight toward him.

"Tradesman?" asked the servant.

"Reporter," he said, looking straight into the other's eyes somewhat defiantly.

"Whom do you wish to see?"

"Mrs. Barton Randolph."

"This way, please."

He followed, past more tables, past more eyes. He watched while the servant approached the woman he knew to be Mrs. Barton Randolph, who excused herself from the group around her. The servant returned.

"You were sent here from your office?" he asked.

John produced the admission card given him by his city editor.

"Very well. Mrs. Randolph instructs me to tell you that any information you desire may be obtained from her secretary in half an hour. In the meanwhile you are to consider yourself as one of the guests."

He was not long in reaching the gravel driveway again and he was headed for the street, determined to wait there for the thirty minutes, when he noticed that to his left only a few of the tables were occupied. At one of these he could wait in the shade. Besides, he had a feeling that he was little more than a coward if he went outside.

Far back from the driveway, in fact at the table farthest from the drive, he seated himself with a sigh of relief. For a while he believed himself well alone, before he discovered that directly facing him sat another man, a man lounging in a wicker garden chair, alone, idly smoking a cigarette and gazing at him somewhat intently. Instantly John disliked this man, for two reasons: he was too immaculately dressed and his hair was so perfect that it appeared to have been moulded on his head.

The man continued to gaze at him, and John, feeling his face grow hot, stared back.

Then the man flicked the ash from his cigarette, turned lazily in his chair and raised his hand as a signal to a servant who was hovering over a table and who hurried to him in response. He spoke to the servant and inclined his head slightly in John's direction. The servant bowed and came toward John's table.

"If you're not a guest here, sir, you will kindly leave the grounds," he said.

John felt his blood gush through his veins. He saw the man in the wicker chair smile mildly and look up into the branches of the tree overhead. He overcame a wild impulse to step over and ruin the perfect hair.

"But it happens I am a guest," he said, as clearly as his choked back temper permitted.

"You are, sir!" the servant pretended astonished humiliation. "Would you be so good as to say by whose invitation?"

Then it happened. John afterwards was never quite sure what would have taken place there had it not occurred.

To John she seemed to have blossomed up out of the ground before them. He never saw anyone who looked more like a flower, a delicate, beautiful flower. She was in white, a quaint frock with ridiculously tiny puffed sleeves reaching only halfway to her elbows, gathered in with a narrow black ribbon. Something about her, the way she looked, the dress, the whole expression of her face, sent the thought "an old-fashioned girl" coursing through John's brain.

The servant stepped back.

"Do you happen to be the newspaper reporter—?" she said.

John nodded.

"Then I am so glad to have found you. Mrs. Randolph felt she was rather abrupt when you asked to see her and when she noticed you walking rapidly away she feared you were offended. I volunteered to find you." She was in the chair beside him.

"You are very kind and I am very happy," he managed to say. "I wasn't offended. I was embarrassed and frightened."

"By what?"

"By all this. The servant asked me if I was a tradesman—whatever that is—isn't that enough to frighten anyone?"

"I've read stories of reporters who never knew fear. And in plays the reporter always does the bravest things."

"In stories and in plays," he repeated. "This, too, is like a story or a play. Here I am rescued by a heroine who is—who is——"

"Who is what?"

"Beautiful." The word was no sooner spoken than he could have bitten off his tongue.

He hoped she would laugh it away, but she only looked at him, her lips parted, a hint of incredulousness in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said. He was glad now that she had not laughed or taken the word he had spoken lightly. He felt she knew he had not said it in an attempt at silly flirtation.

"You spoke of being rescued," she said, smiling again.

"Yes, and the villain is yet in the background," he said. "A devilishly handsome villain he is, too."

She glanced back over her shoulder. The servant had disappeared. The man in the wicker chair was looking at them, a half smile on his lips.

"Surely," she said, "not Mr. Gibson?"

"If Mr. Gibson is the gentleman in the chair over there, yes."

"And why a villain?"

"Well, he whispered something to the servant who was here when you came that caused him to come here and ask me to leave. That was how you rescued me."

"It is like a book or a play, isn't it?"

"Only in books and plays dreams come true," he told her. "And villains are vanquished."

"And what dream do you wish to come true?"

"A dream—a rather silly, hopeless, golden sort of dream—a dream of meeting you again."

Once more he could have bitten off his tongue. Now she would think him a maudlin flirt. He looked to the ground and saw his dusty, worn shoes. He was afraid to hear her speak, afraid to look up. At last he did, expecting to find her gone. But she was there, looking at him as she had when he told her she was beautiful, the same hint of incredulousness in her eyes.

"Don't say you're sorry," she said softly. "I'd like to think you meant it."

They were silent. He saw the man in the wicker chair rise, toss aside his cigarette and come toward them, slowly. They waited, without speaking, until he reached their table.

His eyes met Gibson's steadily for two tense seconds. Then he saw Gibson turn from him to the girl as if he was not there.

"Consuello," Gibson said.

She rose.

"Reggie," she said, "a friend, Mr.——"

"John Gallant," John said, slowly.

"Mr. Gallant, Mr. Gibson," she said. They shook hands.

"I believe I saw Mr. Gallant several nights ago," Gibson said.

John waited, wondering how Gibson would say it.

"He was very busily engaged with another gentleman"—he gave a slight emphasis to the "gentleman"—"whose name, I believe, was Rodriguez."

"Really! You have met before?"

"Come, Consuello," said Gibson, "we must be trotting back to the house. The afternoon will be gone soon."

She saw the look in John's eyes before she answered:

"Reggie, you must excuse me. I'll be along shortly—with Mr. Gallant."

"Very well," Gibson turned leisurely and they watched him walk away.

He was only slightly incensed by Gibson's deliberate insult in strolling away without acknowledging, by even so much as a nod of his head, their introduction to each other by Consuello. He felt a tinge of satisfaction, of even vengeance.

"You mustn't let me keep you," he said, as he saw she still looked at Gibson's retreating figure and that an expression of astonishment was puzzling her face.

"It was wrong of him—I do not understand," she said. She laughed lightly. "But you must not believe him a villain. It was so unlike him. I'm sure he will tell you so himself before you leave."

The hum of starting motors came to them and through the trees John saw the first of the long line of automobiles go up the driveway toward the house. The fete was ending; the guests were leaving. He remembered why he was there; his appointment to meet Mrs. Randolph's secretary. They started across the lawn.

"Mrs. Randolph will believe I'm lost," she said. "I shouldn't be surprised if she has already sent someone to look for me."

"I hope——" he began.

"Yes."

"I hope you do not feel I have been bold," he said. "It was rude and presumptuous for me to say the things I did to you. Please try to understand and forgive me."

"If I say I believe I understand and that there is nothing to forgive, will you think me vain?" she asked.

They reached the driveway. Luxurious sedans and limousines with liveried chauffeurs blocked their crossing. She turned to him, her hand extended.

"Good afternoon," she said. "Sometime, soon perhaps, if you wish, we will meet again; you will hear from me, because—because I—think you meant it." She added the final words lightly and with a smile.

"I did," he said.

She turned to the driveway. An automobile stopped and she crossed over in the gap of the line of motors it made for her. The machine moved forward again, blocking any sight of her as she went on toward the house.

The list of guests and the amount of money netted by the fete he received from Mrs. Randolph's secretary in neatly typewritten lists. The last of the motors were chugging up the driveway as he left. He walked out into the street, toward the car line, bound for his office.

As he waited at the corner for his car a low, rakish roadster stopped before him. He heard a creaking of brakes and saw the back wheels of the machine lock as it came to a stop. He looked up. Gibson was at the wheel, Consuello at his side.

"Mr. Gallant," Gibson called.

John stepped forward. Gibson leaned toward him, his hand outstretched.

"Miss Carrillo has reminded me I made rather a fool of myself back there at the table," he said, smiling. "Perhaps you may understand the position I was in. I offer my apologies."

John gripped his hand.

"Thanks," said Gibson. "You understand how it is."

"Yes," assented John, without really knowing what his answer meant.

"Sorry there isn't room to give you a lift to town," Gibson said, racing the motor and shifting the gear. As the machine moved away John saw Consuello smile and there was an echo of gladness in his heart.

But a disconcerting thought crept into John's mind as he watched Gibson's machine disappear in the traffic. Had she only been kind to him because of an instinctive sympathy, born of good breeding, for his embarrassment there on the lawn? Was she laughing now with Gibson, telling him of her experience with a flirtatious or sickly sentimental cub reporter? Something in the manner of Gibson as he offered his apology caused this suspicion to spring into his mind against her.

Yes, that was it. She had only pitied him, his awkwardness, his apparent discomfort, his shabby suit, his worn shoes. She had led him artfully into telling her she was beautiful and that he dreamed—he cursed himself as he remembered his words, "a rather silly, hopeless, golden sort of dream,"—of meeting her again. Meet him again? Why, she would probably forget him tomorrow unless she recalled how he had acted and told it as something to laugh over.

What a fool, what a weak, mawkish, insipid fool he had made of himself!

He burned with humiliation. Even if she had been sincere, what would she think of him when Gibson told her of his fight at Vernon with Battling Rodriguez? He could see her, in his imagination, assuring Gibson that had she known he was a prize fighter, a brute who fought with his fists for money, she would never have spoken to him. Of course, Gibson would not tell her why he had fought at Vernon. He felt this instinctively.

He pictured her and Gibson together at all sorts of places, on a yacht cruising around Catalina island, on the links at a country club, a ball at the Ambassador, racing along the coast road to Santa Barbara in Gibson's expensive car, at the opera and supper later. Then thought of the patch on his own trousers. Oh, what a fool he had been!

When he returned to the office—it was after 5 o'clock—he found it deserted except for Brennan and P. Q. Brennan was squatted on the city editor's desk. P. Q. was leaning back in his swivel chair, his feet perched on the desk before him.

"Well, son, how did you enjoy your afternoon in society?" he asked as John handed in the typewritten sheets given him by Mrs. Randolph's secretary. He glanced at the list of guests.

"I see Gibson's name here—Reginald Gibson—did you happen to meet him or see him out there?"

John was startled. He had heard the reporters tell of P. Q.'s superhuman ability of knowing, without being told, what his men did out on assignments. What made him ask if he had met Gibson?

"Yes—I saw—I met him," he replied.

"You did, huh? Well, you must have been mixing in proper. I wish I'd known Gibson was out there. Brennan, here, has been trying to find him all afternoon. You don't happen to know where he is now, do you?"

"I saw him leave."

"Alone?"

"No, there was someone with him in his car."

"Who was it?" Brennan asked.

"Miss Consuello Carrillo," John answered, puzzled by this cross-examination.

"Good!" exclaimed Brennan, sliding from his perch on the desk and seizing a telephone book.

"How did you happen to know who it was with Gibson?" asked P. Q., as Brennan disappeared into a telephone booth.

"I—I—met her," John said, his puzzled feeling turning to astonishment.

"Well, well, you WERE mixing in, weren't you?" P. Q. smiled. "Gibson was appointed police commissioner a few hours ago. He's a good man for you to know, because if we're not mistaken he's going to start something that will keep him on the front page for some time to come."

Brennan came hustling out of the phone booth.

"She asked if you were here—wants to speak to you," he said.

"To me? Who?" asked John.

"Miss Carrillo. I telephoned her place to try to reach Gibson. She said he had just left and asked me if you had returned yet. Get in there and find out if anyone's got to Gibson yet about his appointment as police commissioner."

Brennan stuck his head in the booth to listen as John lifted the receiver.

"Hello," he said.

"Mr. Gallant?" it was her voice.

"Yes."

"You see, he did not forget. I did not ask him to make that apology; I only told him I thought he had been forgetful."

"Yes," said John, realizing she was referring to the apology offered him by Gibson.

"Now that he is a police commissioner he will need you, as a newspaper man, for a friend."

"Ask her if he has given any interviews yet," Brennan put in.

"Has Mr. Gibson made a statement concerning his appointment?" John asked.

"No, I don't believe he knows yet that he has been appointed."

"Where is he now?" prompted Brennan.

"Do you know where he went when he left your place?"

"No, I'm sorry, I don't. Home, I suppose."

"Thank you, Miss Carrillo."