The Girl in his House by Harold MacGrath (learn to read activity book .TXT) 📕
He leaned against the bars, panting, but completely and thoroughly reveneered. "Of all the colossal tomfools!" he said, aloud. "What in thunder am I going to do now?"
"Well, Aloysius," boomed a heavy voice, which was followed by a still heavier hand, "you might come along with me; the walking's good. Bell out o' order? Was there any beer in the ice-chest?" The policeman peered under the peak of Armitage's cap. "I saw you climb over that grille. Up with your hands, and no monkey-shines, or I'll rap you one on the conk!"
Armitage obeyed mechanically. There was a temporary cut-off between his mind and his body; they had ceased to co-ordinate. The policeman patted all the pockets, and a thrill of relief ran over the victim. Somewhere along the route he had lost the automatic. As he felt the experienced fingers going over his body he summoned with Herculean effort his scattered forces. Smack into the arms of a policeman! Here was a situation which called f
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“I didn’t,” said Mrs. Burlingham, who, like all happily wedded women, believed in clairvoyance. “What brought you back?” —confident that she knew.
“How’s the baby?” countered Armitage.
“Baby? Why, the baby is twelve, and doing his bit at a military school. Some boy, Jim. If you turn out to be half as fine a man as he is—” Burlingham slapped his boyhood friend on the shoulder. “But what brought you back?”
“Fate,” said Armitage, soberly. “But I thought it was this.” He took out the clipping and handed it to Betty.
Now that he was safely at anchor in a most congenial harbor, he became aware of a strange, indescribable exhilaration. A superficial analysis convinced him that it was not due to the propinquity of these old friends of his; rather the cause lay over there in the dark, beyond the shadows. Over and above this, he was in a quandary. How much should he tell of this tomfool exploit of his? Just enough to whet their curiosity, or just nothing at all? Sooner or later, though. Bob, who was a persistent chap, would be asking about Durston’s grille.
Would she notify the police? He wasn’t sure. She seemed rather a resolute young woman. Heavens! she had been after him like a hawk after a hare! Pearl and pomegranate and Persian peach! Was he fickle? Was that it? No. A fickle man could not have remained loyal for six years to the memory of a jilt. He determined to ask some questions later—cautious, roundabout questions. He was far off his course, with a paper compass and nothing to take the sun with. And still that tingle of exhilaration!
“And so that brought you back?” said Betty, returning the clipping.
“No; I only thought it brought me back. I honestly believe that I never really loved Clare at all. Else, why should I be glad to be back, assured that I can meet her without wobbling at the knees?” Armitage rolled the clipping into a ball and tossed it into the fire.
“She was here to tea this afternoon, Jim,” said Betty, softly.
“She’s back in town, then, with her millions?”
“Yes. She’s different, though. I really think she cared for you. From a lovely girl she has become a beautiful woman,”
“Nothing doing, Betty. I shall never marry!” Armitage pulled out his pipe and filled it.
“Oh, piffle!” exploded Burlingham. “You’re only thirty-four. Mark me, old scout, after six years’ roaming around jungles and hobnobbing with ‘duskies,’ you’ll fall for the first ‘skirt’ that makes googoo eyes at you. On the other hand, much as I like Clare, I’m glad you didn’t hook up. She’s beautiful, but hard. And don’t you fool yourself that you weren’t in love with her. You were; but you got over it.”
“Piffle! A bit of slang sounds good.”
“If human beings couldn’t fall out of love as quickly and easily as they fall in, the murder editions of the evening papers would be on the streets before breakfast”; and Burlingham got out his pipe also.
For a quarter of an hour the two men sat in silence, puffing and blowing rings and sleepily eying the fire. Betty watched them amusedly. Weren’t they funny! They hadn’t seen each other in six long years, and hadn’t ever expected to see each other again; and here they were, smoking their dreadful pipes and saying never a word! Two women, now—
“Say, Jim, that pipe of yours is a bird.”
“Calabash I made myself.”
“Well, when you bury it invite me to the funeral.”
“Is it strong?”
“Strong? Wow! It would kill a bull elephant quicker than an express bullet. But finish her up and give us the dope about Durston’s grille.”
Armitage leaned forward and knocked the “dottle” from his pipe. “When I found that clipping I became full of flame. On the way down from Maingkwan to Mahdalay there was a torch in my heart. But, somehow, when I reached Naples I could feel the fire dying down. I hated myself, but I could not escape the feeling. When I stepped off the ship to-day I knew that I had done a sensible thing in surrendering to a mad, shameless impulse. I came very near throwing away my life for something that had ceased to exist or had never existed. Folks, I’m absolutely cured.”
“Going to quit wandering?”
“Perhaps. Great world over there; fascinating.”
“But where will you put up here? You’ve sold the old house. Jim, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard the news last April. To sell the house wasn’t so much, considering you never intended to return; but to sell it furnished, with all those treasures your mother and father had so much fun in collecting! I couldn’t quite understand that.” Burlingham shook his head.
“Nor I,” added his wife.
Armitage, despite the fact that the room was warm, sensed something like a cold finger running up and down his spine. “I suppose it did seem callous to you two. But, honestly, I never expected to come back again. How much does rumor say I got for it?” He dared not look at them.
“Eighty thousand.”
“That’s a tidy sum. I say, what sort of people are they?”
“We’ve met only the daughter,” said Betty, “And, Jimmie Armitage, she’s the loveliest creature I ever saw. Odd, unusual; in all my life I’ve never met any woman quite like her. She has the queerest ideas. The whole world is nothing except a fairy-story to her. I loved her the moment I saw her. Have you ever run across or heard of Hubert Athelstone, explorer and archeologist?”
“Athelstone? No. But that doesn’t signify anything. Those chaps are a queer breed. They are known only among themselves. I’ve run into a few of them. They eat hieroglyphics, walk in a maze of them, sleep on them, and die under them. Almost always they are unattached, homeless beggars, or, if they have families, they forget all about them. No; I don’t recollect the name. Odd one, though.”
“We haven’t met him yet. I believe he’s somewhere in Yucatan. She hasn’t seen him in ages. I never heard of a daughter worshiping a father the way this girl does. It makes me feel little and small when she begins to talk about him. My general impression regarding archeologists hasn’t been complimentary. I’ve always pictured them as withered, dried-up things with huge glasses. But Mr. Athelstone is one of the handsomest men I’ve ever seen! She has shown me his photograph. It must have been taken before she was born, when he was somewhere in the late twenties. Anyhow, no novelist ever conjured a hero to match up with her father, from her point of view.”
“Betty and I are crazy over her,” said Burlingham.
“Indeed we are. About twice a year she hears from her father, and the letters are beautiful. The man must be a poet. We are eager to meet him. She was educated in a convent out of Florence in Italy, and she is more Italian in temperament than English. At eighteen she was ordered by her father to leave. An accomplished woman companion was given her, and together they spent about four years wandering over the ends of the earth. She came back to America in April, after her father had made the purchase of your house. Think of it! She’s seen the Himalayas from Darjeeling! Motherless from childhood. Isn’t it romantic? We see each other nearly every day. I can’t keep away from her. Suppose I have her over to tea to-morrow? She’s been asking lots of questions about you.”
“I’ll be delighted to see her.”
“And remember what I said about goo-goo eyes.” Burlingham laughed.
Armitage got up. He knew enough for his present needs; the picture puzzle was fairly complete, and such blocks as were missing were easily to be supplied by imagination. He leaned against the mantel and idly kicked an andiron—a Florentine winemuller. “Yucatan. And nobody knows when he’ll be back?”
“She hints of the possibility of his return during the holidays.”
Have they changed the interior any?” Only enough to show that a woman instead of a bachelor lives there now. She’s very much in love with everything. She had very little to bring into it. Do you know, Jim, you’ve changed?” concluded Betty, appraisingly.
“Older?” quizzically.
“No. There are lines in your face I never saw before. You are positively handsome.”
“Piffle! Fat’s been burnt out, that’s all.”
“No, that isn’t it. You look—well, I can’t just explain it.”
“I can,” said her husband, owlishly. “Jim’s been living on hard ground instead of sofa pillows. And now, old scout, suppose we take up the original subject, Durston’s grille.”
“First, I’m going to bind you two to absolute secrecy. I’m not joking, folks; something mighty serious has happened to me, and I’m in dead earnest. Promise?”
“We promise,” said Burlingham, mystified.
“The pipes of Fortune!” Armitage rumpled his hair. “Did you ever hear them? When she blows, we dance. And goodness knows, I’ve just begun the queerest dance a man ever shook a leg to. I’ve been actually dumped into the middle of one of those Arabian Nights things. I did not sell the old home, furnished or unfurnished, to anybody in this world!”
ONCE, when Armitage was a little boy, he had gone into the country with his father for trout. They had been overtaken by a violent thunderstorm, and a green vivid bolt had riven the sod within a few feet of them. For hours afterward that green streak had intervened whichever way he looked—interfered with his sense of time and place, thrown him into a land of livid unreality, and partially convinced his child’s mind that he had been transformed into a mechanical toy whose mechanism he could hear clicking inside.
On the morning following his amazing discovery that the house he was born in had been sold without his knowledge—a morning crisp and full of dazzling sunshine —the memory of that bolt came back to him, bringing with it suggestive comparisons. Minus the green streak, his sensations were almost identical. He could walk, think, act, but all with a consciousness that what he did was not real. Indeed, the actual thunderbolt was preferable to this figurative one. To go to bed fairly rich, and to wake up facing the possibilities of utter financial ruin!—helpless to avert it, totally incompetent to build anew! But Armitage was a brave young man, a philosopher who had long since recognized the uselessness of whining. He had at least learned in his wanderings that opportunities were not resuscitable. Dazedly, but pluckily, he started forth to find out how this ruin had been accomplished, vaguely hoping that his good luck would pull him through, that the ruin was not utter.
At nine o’clock he entered the Concord apartments, an old-fashioned building situated in an old-fashioned part of the town, and asked to see the janitor, aware that janitors were easily approachable and generally inclined toward verbosity, which was an interesting sidelight on his knowledge of human beings.
“I wish to make some inquiries regarding Mr. Bordman—Samuel Bordman—who lived here for many years.”
“Ain’t living here now,” replied the janitor, briefly. “When he went away in April he didn’t come back. His lease lapsed in August; so I had to rent his apartment.”
“Have you any idea of his whereabouts?”
“Nope. Packed up and cleared out, ‘s all I know. Say”—with sudden interest—“be you a detective?”
“No. I’m merely one of his clients. I wanted to find him if possible. Did he seem all right when he left?”
“Well, he kind o’ spruced up a bit toward the last and wore a pink in his buttonhole. But he wasn’t any more luny than usual.”
“A trifle queer,
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