The Man in Lower Ten, Page 2

  CHAPTER II. A TORN TELEGRAM

  I lunched alone at the Gilmore house, and went back to the city at once.The sun had lifted the mists, and a fresh summer wind had cleared awaythe smoke pall. The boulevard was full of cars flying countryward forthe Saturday half-holiday, toward golf and tennis, green fields andbabbling girls. I gritted my teeth and thought of McKnight at Richmond,visiting the lady with the geographical name. And then, for the firsttime, I associated John Gilmore's granddaughter with the "West" thatMcKnight had irritably flung at me.

  I still carried my traveling-bag, for McKnight's vision at the windowof the empty house had not been without effect. I did not transferthe notes to my pocket, and, if I had, it would not have altered thesituation later. Only the other day McKnight put this very thing up tome.

  "I warned you," he reminded me. "I told you there were queer thingscoming, and to be on your guard. You ought to have taken your revolver."

  "It would have been of exactly as much use as a bucket of snow inAfrica," I retorted. "If I had never closed my eyes, or if I had keptmy finger on the trigger of a six-shooter (which is novelesque forrevolver), the result would have been the same. And the next time youwant a little excitement with every variety of thrill thrown in, I canput you by way of it. You begin by getting the wrong berth in a Pullmancar, and end--"

  "Oh, I know how it ends," he finished shortly. "Don't you suppose thewhole thing's written on my spinal marrow?"

  But I am wandering again. That is the difficulty with the unprofessionalstory-teller: he yaws back and forth and can't keep in the wind; hedrops his characters overboard when he hasn't any further use for themand drowns them; he forgets the coffee-pot and the frying-pan and allthe other small essentials, and, if he carries a love affair, hemutters a fervent "Allah be praised" when he lands them, drenched withadventures, at the matrimonial dock at the end of the final chapter.

  I put in a thoroughly unsatisfactory afternoon. Time dragged eternally.I dropped in at a summer vaudeville, and bought some ties at ahaberdasher's. I was bored but unexpectant; I had no premonition of whatwas to come. Nothing unusual had ever happened to me; friends of minehad sometimes sailed the high seas of adventure or skirted the coasts ofchance, but all of the shipwrecks had occurred after a woman passengerhad been taken on. "Ergo," I had always said "no women!" I repeatedit to myself that evening almost savagely, when I found my thoughtsstraying back to the picture of John Gilmore's granddaughter. I evenargued as I ate my solitary dinner at a downtown restaurant.

  "Haven't you troubles enough," I reflected, "without looking for more?Hasn't Bad News gone lame, with a matinee race booked for next week?Otherwise aren't you comfortable? Isn't your house in order? Do you wantto sell a pony in order to have the library done over in mission or thedrawing-room in gold? Do you want somebody to count the empty cigaretteboxes lying around every morning?"

  Lay it to the long idle afternoon, to the new environment, to anythingyou like, but I began to think that perhaps I did. I was confoundedlylonely. For the first time in my life its even course began to waver:the needle registered warning marks on the matrimonial seismograph,lines vague enough, but lines.

  My alligator bag lay at my feet, still locked. While I waited for mycoffee I leaned back and surveyed the people incuriously. There were theusual couples intent on each other: my new state of mind made me regardthem with tolerance. But at the next table, where a man and woman dinedtogether, a different atmosphere prevailed. My attention was firstcaught by the woman's face. She had been speaking earnestly across thetable, her profile turned to me. I had noticed casually her earnestmanner, her somber clothes, and the great mass of odd, bronze-coloredhair on her neck. But suddenly she glanced toward me and the utterhopelessness--almost tragedy--of her expression struck me with a shock.She half closed her eyes and drew a long breath, then she turned againto the man across the table.

  Neither one was eating. He sat low in his chair, his chin on his chest,ugly folds of thick flesh protruding over his collar. He was probablyfifty, bald, grotesque, sullen, and yet not without a suggestion ofpower. But he had been drinking; as I looked, he raised an unsteady handand summoned a waiter with a wine list.

  The young woman bent across the table and spoke again quickly. She hadunconsciously raised her voice. Not beautiful, in her earnestness andstress she rather interested me. I had an idle inclination to advise thewaiter to remove the bottled temptation from the table. I wonderwhat would have happened if I had? Suppose Harrington had not beenintoxicated when he entered the Pullman car Ontario that night!

  For they were about to make a journey, I gathered, and the young womanwished to go alone. I drank three cups of coffee, which accounted formy wakefulness later, and shamelessly watched the tableau before me.The woman's protest evidently went for nothing: across the table the mangrunted monosyllabic replies and grew more and more lowering and sullen.Once, during a brief unexpected pianissimo in the music, her voice cameto me sharply:

  "If I could only see him in time!" she was saying. "Oh, it's terrible!"

  In spite of my interest I would have forgotten the whole incidentat once, erased it from my mind as one does the inessentials andclutterings of memory, had I not met them again, later that evening,in the Pennsylvania station. The situation between them had not visiblyaltered: the same dogged determination showed in the man's face, but theyoung woman--daughter or wife? I wondered--had drawn down her veil and Icould only suspect what white misery lay beneath.

  I bought my berth after waiting in a line of some eight or ten people.When, step by step, I had almost reached the window, a tall woman whomI had not noticed before spoke to me from my elbow. She had a ticket andmoney in her hand.

  "Will you try to get me a lower when you buy yours?" she asked. "I havetraveled for three nights in uppers."

  I consented, of course; beyond that I hardly noticed the woman. I had avague impression of height and a certain amount of stateliness, but thecrowd was pushing behind me, and some one was standing on my foot. I gottwo lowers easily, and, turning with the change and berths, held out thetickets.

  "Which will you have?" I asked. "Lower eleven or lower ten?"

  "It makes no difference," she said. "Thank you very much indeed."

  At random I gave her lower eleven, and called a porter to help herwith her luggage. I followed them leisurely to the train shed, and tenminutes more saw us under way.

  I looked into my car, but it presented the peculiarly unattractiveappearance common to sleepers. The berths were made up; the center aislewas a path between walls of dingy, breeze-repelling curtains, whilethe two seats at each end of the car were piled high with suitcases andumbrellas. The perspiring porter was trying to be six places at once:somebody has said that Pullman porters are black so they won't show thedirt, but they certainly show the heat.

  Nine-fifteen was an outrageous hour to go to bed, especially since Isleep little or not at all on the train, so I made my way to the smokerand passed the time until nearly eleven with cigarettes and a magazine.The car was very close. It was a warm night, and before turning in Istood a short time in the vestibule. The train had been stoppingat frequent intervals, and, finding the brakeman there, I asked thetrouble.

  It seemed that there was a hot-box on the next car, and that not onlywere we late, but we were delaying the second section, just behind. Iwas beginning to feel pleasantly drowsy, and the air was growing cooleras we got into the mountains. I said good night to the brakeman andwent back to my berth. To my surprise, lower ten was already occupied--asuit-case projected from beneath, a pair of shoes stood on the floor,and from behind the curtains came the heavy, unmistakable breathing ofdeep sleep. I hunted out the porter and together we investigated.

  "Are you asleep, sir?" asked the porter, leaning over deferentially.No answer forthcoming, he opened the curtains and looked in. Yes, theintruder was asleep--very much asleep--and an overwhelming odor ofwhisky proclaimed that he would probably remain asleep until morning. Iwas irritated. The car was full
, and I was not disposed to take an upperin order to allow this drunken interloper to sleep comfortably in myberth.

  "You'll have to get out of this," I said, shaking him angrily. But hemerely grunted and turned over. As he did so, I saw his features for thefirst time. It was the quarrelsome man of the restaurant.

  I was less disposed than ever to relinquish my claim, but theporter, after a little quiet investigation, offered a solution of thedifficulty. "There's no one in lower nine," he suggested, pulling openthe curtains just across. "It's likely nine's his berth, and he's made amistake, owing to his condition. You'd better take nine, sir."

  I did, with a firm resolution that if nine's rightful owner turned uplater I should be just as unwakable as the man opposite. I undressedleisurely, making sure of the safety of the forged notes, and placing mygrip as before between myself and the window.

  Being a man of systematic habits, I arranged my clothes carefully,putting my shoes out for the porter to polish, and stowing my collar andscarf in the little hammock swung for the purpose.

  At last, with my pillows so arranged that I could see out comfortably,and with the unhygienic-looking blanket turned back--I have always adistrust of those much-used affairs--I prepared to wait gradually forsleep.

  But sleep did not visit me. The train came to frequent, grating stops,and I surmised the hot box again. I am not a nervous man, but there wassomething chilling in the thought of the second section pounding alongbehind us. Once, as I was dozing, our locomotive whistled a shrillwarning--"You keep back where you belong," it screamed to my drowsyears, and from somewhere behind came a chastened "All-right-I-will."

  I grew more and more wide-awake. At Cresson I got up on my elbow andblinked out at the station lights. Some passengers boarded the trainthere and I heard a woman's low tones, a southern voice, rich andfull. Then quiet again. Every nerve was tense: time passed, perhaps tenminutes, possibly half an hour. Then, without the slightest warning, asthe train rounded a curve, a heavy body was thrown into my berth. Theincident, trivial as it seemed, was startling in its suddenness, foralthough my ears were painfully strained and awake, I had heard no stepoutside. The next instant the curtain hung limp again; still without asound, my disturber had slipped away into the gloom and darkness. In afrenzy of wakefulness, I sat up, drew on a pair of slippers and fumbledfor my bath-robe.

  From a berth across, probably lower ten, came that particularaggravating snore which begins lightly, delicately, faintly soprano,goes down the scale a note with every breath, and, after keeping thelistener tense with expectation, ends with an explosion that tears thevery air. I was more and more irritable: I sat on the edge of the berthand hoped the snorer would choke to death. He had considerable vitality,however; he withstood one shock after another and survived to startagain with new vigor. In desperation I found some cigarettes and onematch, piled my blankets over my grip, and drawing the curtains togetheras though the berth were still occupied, I made my way to the vestibuleof the car.

  I was not clad for dress parade. Is it because the male is so restrictedto gloom in his every-day attire that he blossoms into gaudy colors inhis pajamas and dressing-gowns? It would take a Turk to feel athome before an audience in my red and yellow bathrobe, a Christmasremembrance from Mrs. Klopton, with slippers to match.

  So, naturally, when I saw a feminine figure on the platform, my firstinstinct was to dodge. The woman, however, was quicker than I; shegave me a startled glance, wheeled and disappeared, with a flash of twobronze-colored braids, into the next car.

  Cigarette box in one hand, match in the other, I leaned against theuncertain frame of the door and gazed after her vanished figure. Themountain air flapped my bath-robe around my bare ankles, my one matchburned to the end and went out, and still I stared. For I had seenon her expressive face a haunting look that was horror, nothing less.Heaven knows, I am not psychological. Emotions have to be written largebefore I can read them. But a woman in trouble always appeals to me, andthis woman was more than that. She was in deadly fear.

  If I had not been afraid of being ridiculous, I would have followedher. But I fancied that the apparition of a man in a red and yellowbath-robe, with an unkempt thatch of hair, walking up to her andassuring her that he would protect her would probably put her intohysterics. I had done that once before, when burglars had tried to breakinto the house, and had startled the parlor maid into bed for a week.So I tried to assure myself that I had imagined the lady's distress--orcaused it, perhaps--and to dismiss her from my mind. Perhaps she wasmerely anxious about the unpleasant gentleman of the restaurant. Ithought smugly that I could have told her all about him: that he wassleeping the sleep of the just and the intoxicated in a berth thatought, by all that was fair and right, to have been mine, and that if Iwere tied to a man who snored like that I should have him anesthetizedand his soft palate put where it would never again flap like a loosesail in the wind.

  We passed Harrisburg as I stood there. It was starlight, and the greatcrests of the Alleghanies had given way to low hills. At intervals wepassed smudges of gray white, no doubt in daytime comfortable farms,which McKnight says is a good way of putting it, the farms being a lotmore comfortable than the people on them.

  I was growing drowsy: the woman with the bronze hair and the horrifiedface was fading in retrospect. It was colder, too, and I turned with ashiver to go in. As I did so a bit of paper fluttered into the air andsettled on my sleeve, like a butterfly on a gorgeous red and yellowblossom. I picked it up curiously and glanced at it. It was part of atelegram that had been torn into bits.

  There were only parts of four words on the scrap, but it left me puzzledand thoughtful. It read, "-ower ten, car seve-."

  "Lower ten, car seven," was my berth-the one I had bought and foundpreempted.