Part 23

"Oh, yes, you know some lovely poetry, Blan, but I'm afraid I'm not poetical. I like the things they say in songs,--things I can understand. I'd rather hear slang--"

"'The illegitimate sister of poetry--'"

She looked up at him blankly. Then she sighed and turned her eyes off to the darkling water.

"No one ever made love to suit me, somehow--men are queer--they're so blind--they seem to know so little about the things that mean a lot to a woman." She shivered. "It's getting chilly, isn't it. I'm cold."

"Shall I get you a wrap?"

She took his arm and placed it about her shoulder. "That'll do," she said.

"Fancy, you are adorable--you're absolutely complete. You're unique--you're a nonpareille!"

"I'd rather be a peach," she confessed, snuggling closer.

"You are, Fancy--a clingstone! I'd like to kiss you to death."

"Now, _that's_ the stuff!"

"I'm sorry you don't appreciate my compliments," he remarked, after this little episode.

"I'm afraid I don't. I'm sorry I'm not intellectual, Blan, but I'd rather have you call me a 'damn fool' if you said it lovingly, than have you say pretty things I can't understand."

"All right, then, you're a damn fool!"

She laughed happily. "Thank you, Blan, dear, that was nice! I believe you're improving."

"Oh, if you prefer Anglo-Saxon, I'll call you a piece, a jade, baggage, harridan, hussy, minx--"

"Yes, but you must put 'dear' at the end, you know, to show that you're not in earnest."

"I'll try to remember."

Fancy went on:

"It's wonderful to be out here, all alone with you on the water, cut off from everything. It satisfies me gorgeously--it's like the taste of ice-cream to a hungry little kid. I remember how I used to long for it. I was awfully poor and lonely once. I believe I'm happy now. What do you think it is, Blan, you or the coffee? Don't you want to hold my hand? Let's just sit here and forget things--but I haven't very much to forget, have I? I'd like to read books and know some of the things you do--but it's too late now--I guess I'll always be ign'ant."

"Oh, I'll teach you all the things you want to know," he said condescendingly. "You're good material and you'd learn quickly. I could make a wonder out of you with a little training. I'll give you lessons if you like."

"I accept," said Fancy Gray.

Then she added:

"I don't expect you'll love me very long, Blan, but you must make up for it by loving me as much as you can. That's where I can teach you. Men aren't faithful like women are--I'm glad I'm a woman, Blan."

"I'm glad you are," he echoed.

The night fell, and they began reluctantly to make preparations for their departure. While Cayley was busy in the kitchen, packing up a basket to be returned, Fancy went into the little white state-room to do her hair and put on her wrap.

As she came out she noticed a little card-tray in the corner of the living-room, and idly turned the names over, one by one. Of a sudden her hand fell, and her eyes were fixed intently upon a card that had just come into sight. It bore the legend:

MR. FRANCIS GRANTHOPE

She threw herself upon the couch by the window and broke into sobs.

"Say, Fancy! It's after seven o'clock," Cayley called to her from the kitchen.

She stumbled to her feet and went out on deck, dipped her handkerchief in the salt water and bathed her eyes. Cayley came out just as she finished. It was too dark, now, to notice her expression.

They took the rowboat which had been nuzzling alongside the flank of the ark all day, made for the shore and went aboard the steamer.

It was crowded with Sunday picnickers, who came trooping on in groups, singing, the girls flushed and sunburned with hair distraught and dusty shoes; the men in jovial, uncouth disarray in canvas and in corduroy, like tramps and vagabonds, laden with ferns and flowers. Hunters, with guns and dogs, tramped aboard; fishermen, with rods and baskets; tired families, lagging, whining, came in weary procession. Both decks of the boat were crowded. A brass band struck up a popular air. The restaurant, the bar and the bootblack stand all did a great business.

Cayley and Fancy Gray went to the upper deck for a last draft of the summer breeze. As they sat there, talking little, watching the throng of uneasy passengers, Fancy called his attention to a couple sitting opposite.

It was a strangely assorted pair, the girl and the man. She was about twenty years of age, with a pretty, earnest, freckled face and a modest air. She was talking happily, with undisguised fondness, to the young man beside her. His face was hideous, without a nose. In its place was a livid scar and a depression perforated by nostrils that made his appearance malign. He wore nothing to conceal the mutilation, shocking as it was. His manner toward the girl was that of a lover, devoted and tender.

"Did you ever see anything so awful?" said Fancy. "And isn't she terribly in love with him though! I know who she is; her name is Fleurette Heller. She came into Granthope's studio once and I took a great liking to her. Frank told her that her love affair would come out all right, and she'd be happier than she ever was in her life before."

"I don't see how she can endure that object," said Cayley.

"Don't you?" said Fancy, "that's because you don't know women. She's in love with him. I understand it perfectly. I wouldn't care a bit how he looked."

She nodded, as she spoke, to a man who passed just then. He was dark-skinned, with a pointed beard. He gave her a quick jerk of the head and grinned, showing a line of yellow teeth, and his glance jumped with the rapidity of machinery from her face to Cayley's, and away again. He walked on, his hands behind his back against a coat so faded and shiny as to glow purple as a plum.

Fancy's eyes followed him. "That's Vixley," she said.

Cayley's look turned from a pretty blonde across the way and he became immediately attentive. "Who's Vixley?"

"Why, Professor Vixley, the slate-writer, you know."

"Oh, yes--he's a medium, is he? What sort is he?"

She shook her head. "Wolf! He makes me sick. I'm afraid of him, too. He's out after Granthope with a knife, and I'm afraid he'll do for him some day. Frank ought never to have stood in with him, but you know he used to live with a friend of this man's when he was little, and they've got a hold on him he can't break very well."

"They know things about him?"

"Yes, in a way. Before he braced up. He's square now, and he's trying to shake that bunch. Poor old Frank!"

Cayley pulled at his mustache. "I wish I had noticed Vixley."

"Why?"

"Oh, I'd like to see him, that's all. He must be a pretty clever fakir. Of course he isn't straight?"

"As a bow-knot," said Fancy, "but if he amuses you, I'll introduce you to him. I've got a pretty good stand-in with him, yet." She smiled sadly.

"Suppose you do. I'd like to hear him talk."

"All right," said Fancy. They rose and walked in the medium's direction, encountering him on the foreward deck. He was holding his hat against the fresh breeze and gazing at the approaching lights of the city. The meeting was somewhat constrained at first. Vixley seemed to be embarrassed at Cayley's aristocratic appearance, and evidently wondered what his motive was in being introduced. Cayley, however, was sufficiently a man of the world to be able to put the medium at his ease. He told stories, he made jokes, and gradually drew Vixley out. The wolf talked gingerly, making sure of his ground, his little black eyes shifting from one to the other, whether he spoke or listened. Cayley held him cleverly until the crowd began to descend, making ready for the disembarkation. They went down to the lower deck. Here the crowd had begun to pack together into a close mass, jostling, joking, singing--all sorts and conditions of men in a common holiday mood.

Cayley managed so that Fancy went ahead, and, with some dexterous manoeuvering, allowed two or three persons to pass between himself and her. Vixley was just behind him, when Cayley turned and said quickly:

"Can you meet me at the Hospital Saloon at ten o'clock to-night?"

"What for?" the Professor demanded.

"Important--something about Payson. It is decidedly to your advantage to see me."

"I'll be there!" A light gleamed behind Vixley's shrewd black eyes.

The two squirmed their way to where Fancy was standing, and accompanied her off the boat. At the entrance to the ferry building the medium took his leave. Cayley and Fancy had dinner together, after which, urging an engagement, he put her aboard her car and walked down Market Street to the "Hospital."

Vixley was there, waiting for him, sitting at a side table, regarding an enormous painting of a nude over the bar. His quick eye caught Cayley as he entered and drew him on. For the rest of the interview they did not leave the young man's face.

*CHAPTER XII*

*THE FIRST TURNING TO THE RIGHT*

"All I got to say is this," said Madam Spoll, "if you know what's best for yourself, you won't make no enemies."

"I scarcely think you can hurt me much," said Granthope, losing interest in the discussion, as he saw he could make no way with her.

"We can't, can't we? We know a whole lot more about you than you'd care to have told, Frank Granthope. Since I seen you last, things have developed with Payson, and now we're in a position to say to you, look out for yourself. Payson's stock has went up some. We've got inside information that's valuable."

"Then you don't need me, surely."

"We need you to keep your mouth shut, if nothing else."

"You mean not to tell Mr. Payson anything? I would if I thought I could make him listen."

"Tell _him_? Lord, you can tell him till you're black in the face, and he wouldn't believe it--not till you tell him where we got our information. Why, if he caught me at the keyhole of his room, he wouldn't suspect anything. We've got the goods to deliver this time, don't you fool yourself. Payson's a ten-to-one shot all right. All we want to be sure of now is the girl you're trying to marry."

"I'm not trying to marry her," said Granthope bitterly.

"That's lucky for you!"

"Why?" he demanded suspiciously.

Madam Spoll spoke very slowly and deliberately without asperity, "Because if you _should_ be fool enough to try it on your own hook without helping us out in our game, why, we'd have to show you up to her. I know a little too much about you, Frank Granthope, for you to throw me down as easy as that. You can't exactly set yourself up for a saint, you know; there's the Bennett affair and one or two more like it. Then, again, there's Fancy Gray and several others like _that_. It'll add up to a pretty tidy scandal, if the Payson girl should happen to hear about it all; and if not her, there's others that it won't do you any good to have know."

Granthope shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, looking calmly at the medium. Her face was as placid and unwrinkled as his. She showed not the slightest trace of vindictiveness, talking as though discussing some impersonal business arrangement.

"Then I am to understand that you threaten me with blackmail?"

"Black, white or yellow, any color you like." She made a deprecatory gesture, "But I don't put it that way myself; all I do say is, that it's for your interest to leave us alone. You know as well as I do that we can put the kibosh on your business, if we want to. We've got a pretty good gang to work with, and when we pass the word round and hand you the double-cross, you won't read many more palms at five per, not in this town you won't."

He smiled. "That's all a bluff. You can't expose me without giving yourself away as well."

"What have we got to lose? We could get the old man back any time we gave him a jolly. You can't bust up our business--too many suckers in town for that. Lord, I've been exposed till I grew fat on it. But we can break _you_, Frank Granthope; we can bust your business and queer you with this swell push, easy, not to speak of Clytie Payson."

"Well, then," said Granthope, rising and taking his hat, "go ahead and do it! We might just as well settle this thing now. Smash my business--I don't care; I wish you would! Ruin any social ambition I may be fool enough to have--it'll serve me right for caring for such nonsense. Tell Miss Payson all you know--it'll save me the shame of telling her myself. God knows I wish she did know it! I'm getting sick of the whole dirty game."

Madam Spoll, completely taken aback by his unexpected change of base, stood with a sneer on her face, watching him. "You ought to go on the stage, Frank Granthope--you almost fooled me for a minute," she said with an ironic smile. "I fully expected you to say you had joined the Salvation Army next, and had come around here to save me from hell. So you've got religion, have you? You'd look well in a white necktie, you would! And your inside pocket full of mash notes!"

"Well," he said, walking to the door, "you've had your say and I've had mine. You can believe what you please, but when you do think it over, you may recall the fact that I usually mean what I say."

This was the end of the interview. Madam Spoll, at Vixley's instigation, had sent for Granthope and had "put on the screws." Granthope walked back to his rooms in a brown study. He was at bay now, and there seemed to be no escape for him.

The red-headed office boy was whistling and whittling a pencil lazily at Fancy's desk as the palmist entered. There was no one else in the room.

"Has anybody been here, Jim?" Granthope asked.

Jim looked up carelessly and replied, "Dere was a lady what blew in about a half an hour ago and she told me she might float back."

"Who was she?"

"She wouldn't leave no name, but she was a kissamaroot from Peachville Center all right. She looked like she was just graduated from a French laundry. She left dese gloves here."

He handed over a pair of long, immaculately white gloves, which were lying on a chair. Granthope looked at them carefully, blew one out till it took the form of a hand and then inspected the wrinkles.

"Oh," he said. "Tell Miss Payson to come into my studio when she comes back."

"Say, Mr. Granthope, who's Miss Gray? De lady wanted to know where was Miss Gray, and I told her she could search me, for I wasn't on. She looked like she took me for a shine to be holdin' down de desk here; dat's right."

Granthope walked quickly into his studio without answering.

He seated himself thoughtfully and looked about him, still holding the white glove caressingly in his hand. His eye traveled from the electric-lighted table, round the black velvet arras, to the panel where the signs of the zodiac were embroidered in gold: then his eyes closed. He sat silent for ten minutes or so, then he drew his hand through his heavy black hair and across his brow. His eyes opened; he arose; a faint whimsical smile shone on his face.

Then, still smiling, he strode deliberately across the room, grasped the black velvet hanging and gave it a violent tug, wrenching it from the cornice. It fell in a soft, dark mass upon the floor. He seized the next breadth of drapery, and the next, tearing them from the wall. So he went calmly round the room in his work of destruction, disclosing a widening space of horribly-patterned wall-paper--pink and yellow roses writhing up a violently blue background. On the last side of the room two windows appeared, the glass almost opaque with dust.

He threw up a sash; a shaft of sunshine shot in, and, falling upon the velvet waves upon the floor, changed them to dull purple. In that ray a universe of tiny motes danced radiantly. A current of air set them in motion and swept them from the room through the window into the world outside.

And, as he stood there, his face like that of a child who had released a toy balloon, watching that beam of yellow light, Clytie Payson opened the door of the studio and looked in at him. She appeared suddenly, like a picture thrown vividly upon a screen. She saw Granthope before he saw her, and, for a moment, she stood gazing. His pose was eloquent; he was, in his setting, almost symbolistic--she needed no explanation of what had happened. Then, it was as if some tense cord snapped in her mind, and she threw herself forward, no longer the dreamer, but the actor, giving free rein to her emotion.

He turned and caught sight of her. Her hands were outstretched, her eyes were burning with a new fire, as if her smoldering had burst into flame.

"Oh! You have done it! I knew you would!"

He gave her his two hands in hers, nodding his head slowly; his smile was that of one who viewed himself impersonally, looking on at his own actions. He did not speak. A quaint humor struggled in his mind with the intensity of the situation. Something in him, also, had snapped, and he was self-conscious in his new role.

She clutched his hands excitedly, and lifted her eyes up to his, with a new, unabashed fondness burning in them. She had thrown away all her reserves.

"It's magnificent!" she said. "Oh, how I have longed for this! How I have waited for it! And now, how I admire--and love you for it!"

Her face was so near his that, like an electric spark, the flash of eagerness darted from one to the other. He felt the shock of emotion tingling his blood. It swept his mind from control and flooded his will with an irresistible desire for her. He saw that she was ready for him, willing to be won. He took her in his arms and kissed her softly, but gripping her almost savagely in his embrace.

"Do you mean it?" he cried. "Do you love me, really? I can't believe it! It's too much for me. Tell me!"

She released herself gently, still looking up at him and smiling frankly. "Didn't you know? You, who know so much of women? I thought you understood me as I have understood you."

He still held her, as if he feared he could never get her again so close, and she went on:

"Oh, I would never have told you, if you had gone on as you were going, though I should always have loved you--I could never have helped that. But now, after this crisis, this victory--I know what it all means--I _must_ tell you! Why shouldn't I? It is true, and I am not ashamed to be the first to speak. Yes, I love you!"

The reaction came, his sight grew dark at the thought of his unworthiness, and he freed her, putting her away slowly. Then, as if to resist any temptation, he clasped his hands behind his back.

"I can't stand it!" he exclaimed. "It isn't fair for me to let you say that. Don't say it yet. Wait till I have told you what I am. Then you will despise me, and hate me."

"Never!" she said firmly. "Do you think I don't know you? I am sure. It is impossible for you to surprise me. Whatever you have been or done, it will make no difference--for better or for worse. Of course, I can't know all the circumstances of your life, but I feel that I am sure of your motives--I may know an ideal 'you,' but, if that is not what you are now, it is what you are to be. It is that 'you' that I love--all the rest is dead, I hope." She swept her eyes about the barren room, and her hand went out in comprehensive gesture. "Surely all this can't mean anything less than that? You are not one for compromise or half-measures. You have burned your bridges, haven't you?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "I don't intend to do things half-way. But it's not a pretty story I have to tell. It's selfish, sordid, vulgar."

"Oh, I know something of it, already. Mr. Cayley has told me about that Bennett affair, for he suspected, somehow, that you were implicated in it. And I have guessed more. You needn't be afraid. But you had better tell me as much as you can--not for my sake, but for your own. Then it will all be over, and we can begin fresh."

She dropped to a seat on the couch and leaned languidly against the cushions, clasping her hands in her lap. He scarcely dared look at her, and walked nervously up and down the room, dreading the inevitable ordeal. For a while he did not speak, then he turned swiftly to say:

"Positively, I don't know where to begin!"

"You would better begin at the beginning, then--with Madam Grant."

"You suspected that, then?"

"It was that suspicion that has drawn me to you. I should never have begun to love you without that, perhaps. It seemed to justify my growing feeling for you. Haven't I hinted at that often enough? I mean that in some way we had been connected before. You _were_ the little boy who disappeared when she died, weren't you?"

"Yes, of course."

"But I can't make it out! There was never any child there when I went, though I was conscious of some secret presence--some one invisible."

"I was locked in the closet--I watched you through a crack in the door."

"Oh!" Her eyes widened with a full direct stare; her breath came quickly at the revelation. He watched her, as her expression was transmuted from bewilderment to the beginning of an agonized disillusion. He could not bear it, as he saw that her mind was hastening to the explanation, and he forestalled her next question by his ruthless confession.

"Of course, that's the way I was able to give you that very wonderful clairvoyant reading--the picture of you in Madam Grant's room."

She took the blow bravely, but it was evident that she had not been quite ready for it. "Then you are really not clairvoyant at all? You were simply imposing on my credulity? I want to know the exact truth, so that we can straighten matters out." She spoke slowly, hesitatingly.

"I told you it was a ghastly story--this is the least of it," he said, wincing.

The smile fluttered back to her quivering lips, and with a quick impulse she rose, went to him again and clasped his hand.

"Oh, I'm not making it easy for you!" she cried. "Forgive me, please. I can bear anything you say--be sure of that, won't you? Come here!"

She drew him down to the couch beside her, still keeping his hand in hers. "This is better," she said softly. "Don't think of me as an inquisitor, but as a friend. What you have been can not matter any longer. But let us have no more deceit or reserve between us. You see, I don't quite understand yet about that day. How did you know who I was? How did you get my name?"

He summoned his courage as for an operation desperately necessary, and looked her straight in the eye.

"That was a trick. I read 'Clytie' inside your ring."

She took it without flinching. "But my last name--that wasn't there!"

"Oh, that was inspiration; I can't explain it. You see, I had happened to hear the name 'Payson' that morning, and it recalled the fact that I had seen it before upon a picture in Madam Grant's bedroom. Your father's name, 'Oliver Payson,' it was."

"In Madam Grant's room? How strange! I don't understand that."

"Nor I, either. Yet you say he knew her?" queried Granthope.

"Only slightly, so he gave me to understand, at least--still, that may not be true. He may have his reasons for not telling more." She turned to him with a strange, deliberate, questing expression, and said, "Who _are_ you, anyway?" Then, "Was Madam Grant your mother?"

"I don't know. I've often suspected that it might be so, but somehow I don't quite believe it. I don't, at least, _feel_ it."

"Why did you run away?"