The Destroying Angel by Louis Joseph Vance
III
"MRS. MORTEN"
It was three in the morning before Peter Stark, having to the best ofhis endurance and judgment tired Whitaker out with talking, took his hatand his departure from Whitaker's bachelor rooms. He went with littlemisgiving; Whitaker was so weary that he would have to sleep before hecould think and again realize his terror; and everything was arranged.Peter had telegraphed to have the _Adventuress_ rushed into commission;they were to go aboard her the third day following. In the meantime,Whitaker would have little leisure in which to brood, the winding up ofhis affairs being counted upon to occupy him. Peter had his own affairsto look to, for that matter, but he was prepared to slight them ifnecessary, in order that Whitaker might not be left too much tohimself....
Whitaker shut the hall door, when the elevator had taken Peter away, andturned back wearily into his living-room. It was three in the morning;his body ached with fatigue, his eyes were hot and aching in theirsockets, and his mouth hot and parched with excess of smoking; yet hemade no move toward his bedchamber. Insomnia was a diagnostic of hismalady: a fact he hadn't mentioned to his friend. He had little wish tosurrender his mind to the devils that haunt a wakeful pillow, especiallynow when he could feel the reaction setting in from the anodynousexcitement of the last few hours. Peter Stark's whirlwind enthusiasm hadtemporarily swept him off his feet, and he had yielded to it,unresisting, selfish enough to want to be carried away against the wisercounsels of his intuition.
But now, alone, doubts beset him.
Picking his way across a floor littered with atlases, charts, maps andguide-books, he resumed his chair and pipe and with the aid of a copy of"The Wrecker" and a nightcap, strove to drug himself again with thefascination of the projected voyage. But the savour had gone out of itall. An hour before he had been able to distil a potent magic, thoughtobliterating, by sheer force of repetition of the names, Apia, Hawaii,Tahiti, Samoa.... Now all their promise was an emptiness and a mockery.The book slipped unheeded from his grasp; his pipe grew cold between histeeth; his eyes burned like lamps in their deep hollows, with theirsteady and undeviating glare....
Dawn-dusk filled the high windows with violet light before he moved.
He rose, went to the bath-room and took a bottle of chloral from themedicine-closet. He wondered at the steadiness of the hand that measuredout the prescribed dose--no more, no less. He wondered at the strengthof will which enabled him to take no more. There was enough in thebottle to purchase him eternity.
What he took bought him three hours of oblivion. He rose at eight,ordered his breakfast up by telephone, bathed and dressed. When the traycame up, his mail came with it. Among others there was one letter in awoman's hand which he left till the last, amusing himself by trying toguess the identity of the writer, the writing being not altogetherstrange to him. When at length he gave over this profitless employment,he read:
"DEAR HUGH: I can call you that, now, because you're Peter's dearest friend and therefore mine, and the proof of that is that I'm telling you first of all of our great happiness. Peter and I found out that we loved one another only yesterday, so we're going to be married the first of June and...."
Whitaker read no more. He could guess the rest, and for the moment hefelt too sick a man to go through to the end. Indeed, the words wereblurring and running together beneath his gaze.
After a long time he put the letter aside, absent-mindedly swallowed acup of lukewarm coffee and rose from an otherwise untasted meal.
"That settles that, of course," he said quietly. "And it means I've gotto hustle to get ahead of Peter."
He set busily about his preparations, thinking quickly while he packed.It occurred to him that he had, after all, several hours in which tocatch together the loose ends of things and make an exit without leavingthe businesses of his clients in a hopeless snarl; Peter Stark wouldsleep till eleven, at least, and it would be late in the afternoonbefore the young man could see his fiancee and find out from her thatWhitaker knew of the sacrifice Peter contemplated for friendship's sake.
Whitaker packed a hand-bag with a few essentials, not forgetting thebottle of chloral. He was not yet quite sure what he meant to do afterhe had definitely put himself out of Peter Stark's sphere of influence,but he hadn't much doubt that the drug was destined to play a mostimportant part in the ultimate solution, and would as readily havethought of leaving it behind as of going without a toothbrush or railwayfare.
Leaving the bag in the parcels-room at the Grand Central Station, hewent down-town to his office and put in a busy morning. Happily hispartner, Drummond, was out of town for the day; so he was able to puthis desk in order unhindered by awkward questionings. He workedexpeditiously, having no callers until just before he was ready toleave. Then he was obliged to admit one who desired to make a settlementin an action brought against him by Messrs. Drummond & Whitaker. He tookWhitaker's receipt for the payment in cash, leaving behind him fifteenone-hundred-dollar notes. Whitaker regarded this circumstance as aspecial dispensation of Providence to save him the bother of stopping atthe bank on his way up-town; drew his personal check for the rightamount and left it with a memorandum under the paper-weight onDrummond's desk; put a match to a shredded pile of personalcorrespondence in the fireplace; and caught a train at the Grand Centralat one-three.
Not until the cars were in motion did he experience any sense ofsecurity from Peter Stark. He had been apprehensive until that moment ofsome unforeseen move on the part of his friend; Peter was capable ofwide but sure casts of intuition on occasion, especially where hisaffections were touched. But now Whitaker felt free, free to abandonhimself to meditative despair; and he did it, as he did most things,thoroughly. He plunged headlong into an everlasting black pit of terror.He considered the world through the eyes of a man sick unto death, andfound it without health. Behind him lay his home, a city without aheart, a place of pointing fingers and poisoned tongues; before him thebrief path of Fear that he must tread: his broken, sword-wide spanleaping out over the Abyss....
He was anything but a patient man at all times, and anything but sane inthat dark hour. Cold horror crawled in his brain like a delirium--horrorof himself, of his morbid flesh, of that moribund body unfit to sheathethe clean fire of life. The thought of struggling to keep animate thatcorrupt Self, tainted by the breath of Death, was invincibly terrible tohim. All sense of human obligation disappeared from his cosmos; remainedonly the biting hunger for eternal peace, rest, freedom from the bondageof existence....
At about four o'clock the train stopped to drop the dining-car. Whollyswayed by blind impulse, Whitaker got up, took his hand-bag and left thecar.
On the station platform he found himself pelted by a pouring rain. Hehad left Town in a sodden drizzle, dull and dismal enough in allconscience; here was a downpour out of a sky three shades lighter thanIndia ink--a steadfast, grim rain that sluiced the streets like agigantic fire-hose, brimming the gutters with boiling, muddy torrents.
The last to leave the train, he found himself without a choice ofconveyances; but one remained at the edge of the platform, an aged anddecrepit four-wheeler whose patriarchal driver upon the box might havebeen Death himself masquerading in dripping black oilskins. ToWhitaker's inquiry he recommended the C'mercial House. Whitaker agreedand imprisoned himself in the body of the vehicle, sitting on stainedand faded, threadbare cushions, in company with two distinct odours, ofdank and musty upholstery and of stale tuberoses. As they rocked andcrawled away, the blind windows wept unceasingly, and unceasingly therain drummed the long roll on the roof.
In time they stopped before a rambling structure whose weather-boardedfacade, white with flaking paint, bore the legend: COMMERCIAL HOUSE.Whitaker paid his fare and, unassisted, carried his hand-bag up thesteps and across the rain-swept veranda into a dim, cavernous hall whosewalls were lined with cane-seated arm-chairs punctuated at every secondchair by a commodious brown-fibre cuspidor. A cubicle fenced off in onecorner formed the office proper--for the
Whitaker waited by the desk, a gaunt, weary man, hag-ridden by fear.There was in his mind a desolate picture of the room up-stairs whenhe--his soul: the imperishable essence of himself--should have finishedwith it....
At his elbow lay the hotel register, open at a page neatly headed with adate in red ink. An absence of entries beneath the date-line seemed toindicate that he was the first guest of the day. Near the book was asmall wooden corral neatly partitioned into stalls wherein were herdedan ink-well, toothpicks, matches, some stationery, and--severely byitself--a grim-looking raw potato of uncertain age, splotched with inkand wearing like horns two impaled penholders.
Laboriously prying loose one of the latter, Whitaker registered; buttwo-thirds of his name was all he entered; when it came to "Whitaker,"his pen paused and passed on to write "Philadelphia" in the residencecolumn.
The thought came to him that he must be careful to obliterate alllaundry marks on his clothing.
In his own good time the clerk appeared: a surly, heavy-eyed, loutishcreature in clothing that suggested he had been grievously misled bypictures in the advertising pages of magazines. Whitaker noted, withinsensate irritation, that he wore his hair long over one eye, his mouthajar, his trousers high enough to disclose bony purple ankles. Hiswelcome to the incoming guest was comprised in an indifferent nod astheir eyes met, and a subsequent glance at the register which seemedunaccountably to moderate his apathy.
"Mr. Morton--uh?" he inquired.
Whitaker nodded without words.
The youth shrugged and scrawled an hieroglyph after the name. "Here,Sammy," he said to the boy--"Forty-three." To Whitaker he addressed thefurther remark: "Trunks?"
"No."
The youth seemed about to expostulate, but checked when Whitaker placedone of his hundred-dollar notes on the counter.
"I think that'll cover my liability," he said with a significancemisinterpreted by the other.
"I ain't got enough change--"
"That's all right; I'm in no hurry."
The eyes of the lout followed him as he ascended the stairs in the pathof Sammy, who had already disappeared. Annoyed, Whitaker quickened hispace to escape the stare. On the second floor he discovered the bell-boywaiting some distance down a long, darksome corridor, indifferentlylighted by a single window at its far end. As Whitaker came into view,the boy thrust open the door, disappeared for an instant, and came outminus the bag. Whitaker gave him a coin in passing--an attention whichhe acknowledged by pulling the door to with a bang the moment the guesthad entered the room. At the same time Whitaker became aware of acontretemps.
The room was of fair size, lighted by two windows overlooking the tinroof of the front veranda. It was furnished with a large double bed inthe corner nearest the door a wash-stand, two or three chairs, abandy-legged table with a marble top; and it was tenanted by a woman instreet dress.
She stood by the wash-stand, with her back to the light, her attitudeone of tense expectancy: hardly more than a silhouette of a figuremoderately tall and very slight, almost angular in its slenderness. Shehad been holding a tumbler in one hand, but as Whitaker appeared thisslipped from her fingers; there followed a thud and a sound of spiltliquid at her feet. Simultaneously she cried out inarticulately in avoice at once harsh and tremulous; the cry might have been "_You!_" or"_Hugh!_" Whitaker took it for the latter, and momentarily imagined thathe had stumbled into the presence of an acquaintance. He was pulling offhis hat and peering at her shadowed face in an effort to distinguishfeatures possibly familiar to him, when she moved forward a pace or two,her hands fluttering out toward him, then stopped as though halted by aforce implacable and overpowering.
"I thought," she quavered in a stricken voice--"I thought ... you ... myhusband ... Mr. Morton ... the boy said...."
Then her knees buckled under her, and she plunged forward and fell witha thump that shook the walls.
"I'm sorry--I beg pardon," Whitaker stammered stupidly to ears thatcouldn't hear. He swore softly with exasperation, threw his hat to achair and dropped to his knees beside the woman. It seemed as if thehigh gods were hardly playing fair, to throw a fainting woman on hishands just then, at a time when he was all preoccupied with his ownabsorbing tragedy.
She lay with her head naturally pillowed on the arm she hadinstinctively thrown out to protect her face. He could see now that herslenderness was that of youth, of a figure undeveloped and immature. Herprofile, too, was young, though it stood out against the dark backgroundof the carpet as set and white as a death-mask. Indeed, her pallor wasso intense that a fear touched his heart, of an accident more seriousthan a simple fainting spell. Her respiration seemed entirely suspended,and it might have been merely his fancy that detected the leastconceivable syncopated pulsation in the icy wrist beneath his fingers.
He weighed quickly half a dozen suggestions. His fundamental impulse, tocall in feminine aid from the staff of the hotel, was promptly relegatedto the status of a last resort, as involving explanations which mightnot seem adequate to the singular circumstances; besides, he entertaineda dim, searching, intuitive suspicion that possibly the girl herselfwould more cheerfully dispense with explanations--though he hardly knewwhy.... He remembered that people burned feathers in such emergencies,or else loosened the lady's stays (corsets plus a fainting fit equalstays, invariably, it seems). But there weren't any feathers handy,and--well, anyway, neither expedient made any real appeal to hisintelligence. Besides, there were sensible things he could do to makeher more comfortable--chafe her hands and administer stimulants: thingslike that.
Even while these thoughts were running through his mind, he wasgathering the slight young body into his arms; and he found it reallyastonishingly easy to rise and bear her to the bed, where he put herdown flat on her back, without a pillow. Then turning to his hand-bag,he opened it and produced a small, leather-bound flask of brandy; alittle of which would go far toward shattering her syncope, he fancied.
It did, in fact; a few drops between her half-parted lips, and she cameto with disconcerting rapidity, opening dazed eyes in the middle of aspasm of coughing. He stepped back, stoppering the flask.
"That's better," he said pleasantly. "Now lie still while I fetch you adrink of water."
As he turned to the wash-stand his foot struck the tumbler she haddropped. He stopped short, frowning down at the great, staring, wet,yellow stain on the dingy and threadbare carpet. Together with thisdiscovery he got a whiff of an acrid-sweet effluvium that spelled"_Oxalic Acid--Poison_" as unmistakably as did the druggist's label onthe empty packet on the wash-stand....
In another moment he was back at the bedside with a clean glass ofwater, which he offered to the girl's lips, passing his arm beneath hershoulders and lifting her head so that she might drink.
She emptied the glass thirstily.
"Look here," he said almost roughly under the lash of this newfear--"you didn't really drink any of that stuff, did you?"
Her eyes met his with a look of negation clouded by fear andbewilderment. Then she turned her head away. Dragging a pillow beneathit, he let her down again.
"Good," he said in accents meant to be enheartening; "you'll be allright in a moment or two."
Her colourless lips moved in a whisper he had to bend close todistinguish.
"Please...."
"Yes?"
"Please don't ... call anybody...."
"I won't. Don't worry."
The lids quivered down over her eyes, and her mouth was wrung withanguish. He stared, perplexed. He wanted to go away quickly, butcouldn't gain his own consent to do so. She was in no condition to beleft alone, this delicate and fragile child, defenceless and beset. Itwasn't hard to conjecture the hell of suffering she must have enduredbefore coming t
A variety of impressions, these with others less significant, crowdedupon his perceptions in little more than a glance. For suddenly Naturetook her in hand; she twisted upon her side, as if to escape his regard,and covered her face, her palms muffling deep tearing sobs while wavesof pent-up misery racked her slender little body.
Whitaker moved softly away....
Difficult, he found it, to guess what to do; more difficult still to donothing. His nerves were badly jangled; light-footed, he wanderedrestlessly to and fro, half distracted between the storm of weeping thatbeat gustily within the room and the deadly blind drum of the downpouron the tin roof beyond the windows. Since that twilight hour in thattawdry hotel chamber, no one has ever been able to counterfeit sorrowand remorse to Whitaker; he listened then to the very voice of utterWoe.
Once, pausing by the centre-table, he happened to look down. He saw alittle heap of the hotel writing-paper, together with envelopes, a pen,a bottle of ink. Three of the envelopes were sealed and superscribed,and two were stamped. The unstamped letter was addressed to theProprietor of the Commercial House.
Of the others, one was directed to a Mr. C. W. Morton in care of anotherperson at a number on lower Sixth Avenue, New York; and from thisWhitaker began to understand the singular manner of his introduction tothe wrong room; there's no great difference between _Morton_ and_Morten_, especially when written carelessly.
But the third letter caused his eyes to widen considerably. It bore thename of Thurlow Ladislas, Esq., and a Wall Street address.
Whitaker's mouth shaped a still-born whistle. He was recalling withsurprising distinctness the fragment of dialogue he had overheard at hisclub the previous afternoon.