Читать книгу The Opal Pin - Rufus Gillmore - Страница 6

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David watched Bunce and his guest by capture leave the Back Bay Station in a taxi, and he could not forbear a chuckle as he remembered that Bunce had carried his guest’s bag as well as his own. Then he thought of the opal pin that this enforced guest had pledged with him. He dropped his suitcase upon the walk and was about to examine the pin when suddenly all further thought of it was driven from mind.

The young woman whom he had noticed on the train flung open one of the station doors and hurried by. At the edge of the walk she stood staring after the taxi in which Bunce and his guest had departed, as if eager not to lose sight of them.

“Keb, lady, keb?” In an instant she was confronted by two cab drivers scuffling to wrench the traveling bag from her hand. She appeared to ask them some question about the disappearing taxi, or its occupants, in answer to which they both shook their heads.

“On his trail. And she’s afraid of losing him.”

David’s tone showed his sympathy as well as regret.

She appeared to ask the cab driver another question that renewed the scuffle for her bag. They became rude, clamorous, and were patently attempting to bully her bag away from her. David picked up his suitcase and crossed the walk.

“But they told me that the Hotel Essex was right by the station,” he heard the girl protest.

“Mile and a half away. Gimme your bag!”

“Two dollar’s dirt cheap for the distance. Come on, lady!”

The girl hesitated.

“What the hell do you want?” One of the cab drivers, sensing David’s interference, attempted to scare him off.

The girl turned, and her eyes—not to speak of the troubled look in them—were excuse enough. “I beg your pardon, but if you were going to the Hotel Essex, you got off a station too soon,” David stated. “Oh!”

Neither paid any attention to the cab drivers. They left, muttering their opinion of David.

“The Hotel Essex is by the Terminal Station. This is the Back Bay Station.”

“Everybody seemed to be getting off here. I thought—”

“I fear we misled you. You can take the next train in or—”

“I merely intended to stay there overnight until I could find some good, not too expensive boarding house.” She smiled. “Perhaps you could tell me of one in this neighborhood?”

He liked the frank manner in which she consulted him. He liked her chic three-cornered hat and her trim blue tailored suit. He gave her a number of addresses, but he favored the boarding house in which he lived himself.

“That seems to me like just the place if—if it isn’t too expensive,” she exclaimed.

He found himself being won still more by the earnest, straightforward look in her velvety brown eyes. “Ten dollars a week. I hope that isn’t too much,” he confessed.

“N-o.” She considered him. She appeared to make up her mind about him in a flash. “But do you think I can get a room at that price in such a wonderful place?” she asked, twinkling.

He laughed. “Let me have your bag and we’ll soon learn. It’s not far—shall we go by car, or do you feel like a taxi?”

“Doesn’t a woman have to have a limousine figure to feel like a taxi?” she demanded, her dark young face lighting up until it fairly brimmed with humor.

David glowed at her quickness of response to word and mood. He found himself liking still better this tall, slender, animated young woman. “If there isn’t room there, we’ll have an addition built on,” he exclaimed as he climbed into the taxi beside her.

“If there isn’t”—she seemed properly disappointed—”perhaps I ought to have asked you to hire a carriage for me by the hour. Will you give me all those other addresses again? I hate to trouble you but—”

“ ‘Friends will kindly omit flowers.’ Have you no other friends except me here?”

“You? You move much faster than this taxi, don’t you?” She laughed and there was a lively, comradely ring to her laugh. “I am an utter stranger, and have but two other possible friends here. One is a girl with whom I went to St. Margaret’s years ago, and the other a society woman to whom I have a letter of introduction that I’m not at all likely to present.”

“Why? Don’t you want any more friends or acquaintances?”

“That isn’t it. I’ve discovered that letters of introduction are almost always to people lacking a sense of humor. Did you ever present one to a so-called social leader?”

“No one ever trusted me with one.”

“If you ever had!”

He liked her to threaten him.

“No, that isn’t quite it,” she went on. “Letters of introduction are so like social handcuffs; so often they take away your freedom and sentence you to certain sets. In the end you usually feel these a burden on you, or yourself a burden on them. I’ve come here for a complete rest. I feel sure I shall not present my letter; I may not even look up my old friend at convent, Hilda Cabot.”

“Hilda Cabot!”

“Yes, do you know her?”

“Know her?” David laughed. “No; she’s somewhat above my lowly station and degree. Her people antedate the Mayflower, trace back to Leif Ericson or the mound builders at least. Why, the old State House salaams to them. They’re IT socially. You simply must—” He was interrupted by the stopping of the taxi at their destination.

The boarding-house that they now entered was one of those fine old residences disowned by an impatient former occupant because of its bad associates. As neighboring residence after residence along Mount Vernon Street had gone the ill way of time, and been deserted to lodgers and boarders, its one-time, early-Cunard air of caste had become tarnished. Eventually, in despair, its sensitive owner had become enraged at its bad companions. He had cast it off, and it had fallen to the level of many another fine old house upon the brow of Beacon Hill.

Miss Cobb, its mistress, carried herself as if she might have been deserted with the house. Her station, too, had been sadly reduced by time, and she had feelings that the house didn’t. She was suspected of sleeping on or in one of the pieces of furniture in “The Drawing-room,” as she called the front parlor, but no one ever contrived to catch her at it. Ostentatiously, at ten o’clock each night, she locked its door and then faded miraculously from sight down the hall. People occupying the back parlor testified that they listened nightly in vain for the slightest sound behind its tightly fastened double-doors; boarders, mischievous and serious, knocked loudly on the hall-door to “The Drawing-room” without ever getting an answer after it was once locked. One short-term boarder, meaner or more venturesome than the rest, had even gone so far as to pommel on it at midnight and cry, “Fire!” without proving his contention that Miss Cobb slept in that room. And yet they all liked her despite the distance she religiously preserved between them and her. All Miss Cobb demanded was that same cold, distant civility she accorded her boarders.

Thin, tall, angular, with a frostiness which kept her from being annoyed with sympathy, she advanced on David and his companion in “The Drawing-room.” She stood coldly looking at him—waiting. There was in her manner that which said definitely that she forebore to speak to the young woman until introduced.

For a moment David stood dumbfounded, realizing what was required of him, realizing, likewise, that he did not himself know the young woman’s name. Then he moved between them.

“Miss Cobb,” he said, praying for the fates to be lenient, “I have the honor to introduce to you my friend, Miss Brrerer.”

Miss Cobb disdained to accept the mumbled name. “I beg your pardon, Miss—what was the name?” she demanded.

The blood surged up David’s neck. He was caught hard and fast. During those next few, torturesome seconds he felt as if he had been found with blood on his hands. Then:

“Miss Sherwood—Miss Rose Sherwood,” supplied that attentive young woman, stepping coolly forward, and not making the mistake of offering Miss Cobb her hand. “I would like very much to come here, if you have a room for me.”

David blessed her for his deliverance and rejoiced to note how accurately she had assumed a distance equal to Miss Cobb’s.

Miss Cobb unbent before it, as much as she ever permitted herself at first to unbend. “I’m sorry, Miss Sherwood, but I shall not have a room for another guest until to-morrow morning.”

But this was an emergency for which David had prepared. “Couldn’t Miss Sherwood occupy my room?” he asked. “I know she is anxious to get settled, and I could go out just for to-night.”

Miss Cobb assented readily enough. Rose, however, protested against his sacrifice, only giving in when she perceived the confusion she was causing. A moment later she began to reap her half of the embarrassment. Miss Cobb sternly demanded the names of some Boston people as references.

Fortunately Miss Cobb was not looking at her. She blushed—blushed palpably—and sent a look to David that begged for help.

David guessed instantly the nature of her predicament. She did not know his name; in the flutter of their equivocal situation probably she could not recall a solitary other name to give. It was his turn.

“Miss Sherwood refers to me, Miss Cobb, and also to Miss Hilda Cabot, with whom she was at convent—these will be enough, won’t they?” he asked with assurance.

“Miss Hilda Cabot!” Miss Cobb unbent still more and suddenly. “I couldn’t ask for any better name. I’ll send one of the maids at once to show you to your room.” She almost smiled as she turned to leave after making a precise little bow.

“I’ll take up Miss Sherwood’s bag, if you don’t mind,” David called after her.

“Goodness, those were narrow escapes! I felt as if I were going to fall through to the cellar and you—you were wonderful!” she whispered to him as soon as they were alone.

“And you—what were you?” he declared warmly, not daring to state his admiration in words.

David led the way upstairs to the back hallroom on the second floor. Once inside, they faced each other with twinkling eyes.

“After what we’ve just gone through I feel like an old friend of yours,” he exclaimed jocularly.

“And me—I feel old, a hundred years old, and I don’t know your name even yet.”

“David Shaw—at your service.”

“I shall commit it to memory,” she declared laughingly.

“Well, it’s an easy little mouthful,” countered David. “I suppose I’d better be going now,” he suggested questioningly.

“Not yet; that is, not unless you must,” she corrected herself smilingly. “Why, we’re friends without the formality of first becoming acquaintances. It’s shameful, delightful, isn’t it? We’ve all but compromised each other, and all we know is each other’s name. That’s a dubious situation in which to part—perhaps forever—isn’t it?”

David looked into a pair of brown eyes that sparkled with humor. He needed no urging to stay. “Ask me—ask me anything,” he said.

“Tell me—tell me everything,” she retorted.

She sank down on the couch which ran the length of the narrow room, and David deposited himself upon the only chair.

“Must I tell you the whole story of my life—from nursing bottle to bank account?” he asked lightly.

“Everything—everything!” she commanded.

David was what Bunce called “his right-hand-man,” that is to say, David was the hidden mainspring of Bunce’s highly profitable syndicate of commercial newspapers, and Bunce the open-faced claimant of honors and profits. But David was only biding his time when he should start a similar business of his own. The situation as described by David was essentially humorous. It amused his auditor so that he ran on for much longer than he had intended.

“Now, who and what are you?” he demanded jocularly at last.

“I—I’m an actress.” She proved it by pretending to be embarrassed.

“Actress! I thought—” David checked himself; in time, he hoped.

She was too observant. “What did you think I was?” she demanded alertly.

David struggled with his confusion until he realized he had better make the best of it. “Why, I thought, from what I noticed—of course, I was all wrong—I thought for a time that you were a detective or something of that sort.” He laughed loudly to prove how absurd the idea now seemed to him.

“A detective! Why?” She appeared to be more startled than displeased.

He told her.

She was silent for a long time, reflecting, all the liveliness gone from her expressive face. “Yes, I did turn,” she admitted at last, “but only to watch the ridiculous attempts of Mr. Bunce to scrape acquaintance with that young man. He talked so loudly I couldn’t help hearing.” Her lips parted as if she intended to explain further, but, instead, she once again became silent.

He waited, but she offered no explanation of the confusion she had shown at the sight of Richard Durant. Interested, he held to the subject. To lead her on, he told her how Bunce had finally succeeded in forcing acquaintance.

She bent forward and the glint of a quickened interest showed in her eyes. “Then you must have learned his name,” she exclaimed.

“Yes.” He waited to see if she would ask for it.

“What was it?” she asked without a moment’s hesitation.

“Richard Durant.”

“Richard Durant.” She merely repeated it, contributing nothing to satisfy his curiosity.

“Then you didn’t know?” he asked.

“Know?” She started, came back as from thoughts which had taken her a great distance. “Oh, you mean his name? No, I didn’t know that,” she said, returning instantly to her reflections.

David studied her, baffled, a little nettled at the way he was being left in the dark. “Strange, I thought you must know him from the way you looked at him,” he ventured.

“No; I had never seen him before.” She evaded his eyes, gazed out the window, lost herself.

Her inattention irritated David still more. He became silent, too.

“No; I had never seen him before,” she repeated musingly after a time and speaking more to herself than to him, “but there is one thing I wish I knew.”

“What?”

“I wish I knew how, and where, he obtained that blue opal pin he wore in his tie.”

It was David’s turn to start. His hand all but went to the pocket in which that blue opal pin lay hidden, but something strangely ominous in her tone made him keep his counsel.

“Shall I ask if I meet him again?” he inquired discreetly.

The result was immediate and startling. “No, no, no, you mustn’t think of doing that, you mustn’t,” she cried, the speculative, faraway look gone wholly from her eyes.

“But you want to know.”

“Yes; but—” her eyes dropped before his.

“And he would never dream that I was inquiring for you.”

She appeared to debate, the agitated, troubled look refusing to leave.

“That wouldn’t do any harm, would it?” he demanded, thinking to stir her to decision.

“No—yes—oh, I wish you wouldn’t mention it again or do anything about it!”

“Don’t be alarmed. I won’t speak to him about it.”

He gazed at her in astonishment. She had shivered, risen to her feet, and walked restlessly to the window, as if desiring to be left to herself. What did it all mean? Had the pin been stolen from her? Was she reluctant to have anything said before the thief could be arrested? He had not deemed the scarf pin as a jewel of great value. On the other hand, it might be. Ought he not at least to tell her that he had it in his possession? He decided that he ought.

“That opal pin happens to be—”

He stopped instantly and changed his mind. She had turned a look on him so tremulous and agitated that he dared not go on.