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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
More Lives Than One by Carolyn Wells is a tantalizing mystery that will captivate and intrigue from the first page. When a wealthy industrialist is found dead under suspicious circumstances, the case seems straightforward until a series of shocking revelations turn the investigation on its head. With a cast of intriguing suspects and a web of deceit, each clue points to a shocking conclusion—could there be more to this murder than meets the eye? Detective Fleming Stone is on the case, navigating a labyrinth of hidden motives and buried secrets. As he delves deeper, he discovers that the truth is far more elusive and dangerous than anyone could have imagined. Can Stone unravel the mystery before more lives are lost?
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Table of Contents
More Lives Than One
Chapter 1 - Madeleine
Chapter 2 - The Artists
Chapter 3 - Who Was She?
Chapter 4 - An Unknown Guest
Chapter 5 - Hutchins Investigates
Chapter 6 - Pearl Jane
Chapter 7 - A Friend Indeed
Chapter 8 - The Public Inquiry
Chapter 9 - Mrs. Gardner's Story
Chapter 10 - Barham Learns The Truth
Chapter 11 - At The Studio
Chapter 12 - Chinese Charley
Chapter 13 - The Lucky Piece
Chapter 14 - Marcia Selden's Opinions
Chapter 15 - A Telephoned Wooing
Chapter 16 - Lorimer Lane
Chapter 17 - The Truth About Locke
Chapter 18 - The Whole Truth
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
More Lives Than One
Chapter 1 - Madeleine
"We have no interests in common, Drew; why should we pretend we want to go to the same places?"
"I wonder if married people ever have interests in common? I wonder if any two people have interests in common—or if it's marriage that makes their interests diverge?"
"There you go, with your inane wondering! I often wonder what you'll find to wonder about after you've wondered about everything!"
Mrs. Andrew Barham shrugged her petulant shoulders and studied her nose in a tiny mirror as she applied a discretionary amount of powder.
"Don't overdo that," and Barham smiled.
He meant it rather by way of jest, but Mrs. Selden took it up.
Now, Mrs. Selden was his mother-in-law, and she was always taking things up. In fact, it was her taking up tendency that was partly responsible for the little rift in the Barhams' lute.
And there was a rift. Not a very big one, nor did it seem to widen much with the years. But this was due to Barham's continual and systematic endeavors that it shouldn't.
Madeleine was trying, at times, but she was his wife. She broke loose occasionally into fearful exhibitions of temper, but this was because she had discovered when a small child that they brought her advantages which she could not get otherwise. And, she was his wife.
So, Barham being of a mild and equable disposition himself, overlooked her fits of temper, put down her tryingness to the fact that they didn't see things from the same view point, and they got along.
Had it not been for Mrs. Selden they would have got along much better, but she had an annoying way of sticking her finger in the little rift and tearing it bigger. This, Barham had to overlook also—for, she was his wife's mother.
Apart from Barham's almost exaggerated chivalry toward women in general, he had a fine sense of honor and duty toward his own people, and this, as you can readily see, made his life a bit difficult here and there.
So, when he lightly advised his wife not to overdo her powdering performance, Mrs. Selden said sharply:
"How you do rag at the poor child, Andrew. As if a bit of innocent powder did any harm!"
The trio were just finishing dinner, and Mrs. Selden laid down her coffee spoon with a faint click, as if to express her utter despair at the fearful inhumanity of man.
She was an extremely handsome woman, just this side of sixty, but trying to look, and fairly well succeeding, about fifty. Her white hair was dressed in large soft waves, and her big dark eyes were still bright and expressive. Her complexion was good and, save for an oversharpness of features, she would have been beautiful. But beauty, in her case, was sacrificed to aristocracy, and the somewhat hawklike nose, and high cheek bones gave an effect of high birth and good breeding.
These Marcia Selden had, but she had also traits of domination and determination and amazing powers of irritation.
Moreover, she always assumed herself in the right, and took on an injured expression if any one hinted otherwise.
Mother and daughter didn't get on any too well, but they always found common cause in a grievance against Barham.
A little more harshness of character would have stood the man in good stead—but then, he wouldn't have been Andrew Barham.
"Gentle, lovable—somewhat inconsequent old Drew," as his friends called him, would do almost anything to avoid an unpleasantness; and his doing of almost anything made the opportunities for unpleasantnesses even more frequent.
Quite often he tried the soft answer, guaranteed to turn away wrath; sometimes he changed the subject; and sometimes he merely was silent.
This time he tried the last method, and Mrs. Selden took that up.
"Of course you have nothing to say! There is no answer, no excuse for a gratuitous rebuff. Come now—why do you mind Madeleine's powdering her nose?"
"I daresay I'm a bit old-fashioned, mother, but I have a distaste for vanity-cases used at table. Oh, I know it's done—and all that—but as Madeleine is doubtless at once going to her boudoir, it would seem unnecessary—oh, pshaw, I only said it in a joke, anyway."
"A very poor joke, in my estimation," and Mrs. Selden pursed her thin lips in utter and entire disapproval.
So Barham tried changing the subject.
"Whither away to-night, Madeleine? Or staying at home?"
He glanced at her elaborate house gown, thinking what a pretty woman his wife was. Her dark, bright eyes, her soft dusky hair, and her charming coloring made her almost a beauty. But, like her mother, her attractiveness was lessened by an expression of perversity, a hint of readiness to take offense.
"No; I'm not staying at home—but what does it matter to you where I'm going? As I said, we have no interests in common—and your inquiries are mere politeness!"
"At least, let us keep politeness, Madeleine."
Barham's voice was a bit wistful, and Madeleine might have responded to that note in it, but Mrs. Selden took it up.
"Are you implying that Madeleine is lacking in politeness? Have a care, Andrew! I won't stand everything!"
Now Andrew Barham was not a weak-spirited man, though it might seem so. But his innate courtesy to women and his dread of a scene kept him from any show of righteous indignation at this speech.
Fortunately, Madeleine rose from the table, preventing any further tilting.
"No," she said, suddenly smiling prettily, "I won't tell you where I'm going—yes, I will, I'm going to Mrs. Gardner's. Rest assured it's a place you wouldn't enjoy, so I shan't invite you to go along. Where are you going? To the Club?"
"Yes; maybe to a theater afterward—maybe not."
He looked a bit gloomy as he stood in the hall, lighting a cigarette, and nodding to the man to bring his hat.
"You're extremely good-looking, Drew—but I get so tired of looking at you," his wife said, with a bored little smile. "Perhaps when I see you next, you'll look gayer," and with a mere mockery of throwing a kiss to him, she ran off upstairs to her own rooms.
Mrs. Selden never spent her evenings with "the children." She read the papers and then, dawdling over her rather extensive preparations, she went early to bed.
Leaving the house, Barham walked to his favorite Club, and as he went he mused on the strange fate that had given him Madeleine for a wife.
"No interests in common," he quoted to himself. "Why haven't we? If I had her to myself—without mother Selden around—I might persuade her to take up golf or some outdoor thing that we could do together. But she'd never give up her Bridge. And I can't learn the confounded game! Strange, too; I've a good head for lots of things—yet there are nincompoops like Travers and Jim Bell who can put up a wonderful game of Bridge, though they couldn't cope with the tiniest one of my problems.
"If I had a wife, now, like—" but his own sense of right and wrong forbade him to go further.
After all, Madeleine was his wife—and that was all there was about that. He must try, he decided, to make himself more desirable in her eyes. More attractive, more useful— Well, she had said, that though he was good-looking—that was a nasty fling! As to being useful—he paid her bills and was always a gallant attendant when she wanted him.
But she seldom wanted him. Usually she preferred to go about with her own cronies, who liked him as little as he liked them.
Not that they were really objectionable. But they were a gay and frivolous lot, and even with the best intentions he couldn't speak their lingo.
A man of the world, a clubman, a man about town—all these he was. A good fellow, a fine pal—all his chums would tell you that—yet the sort of Smart Set, semi-fast people his wife enjoyed, were as utter strangers to him.
He had tried—tried to talk their small talk, laugh at their small jests, fathom their small souls—but, though with no undue sense of his own importance he couldn't make good from their point of view.
He set it all down to his own shortcomings, but the fact remained. And so as this was part of the rift, the Barhams had come to spend their evenings, as a rule, away from each other.
However, he had become pretty well used to it, and as he reached his Club he was in a more cheerful frame of mind. He went in with a smile, ran across good old Nick Nelson, and stopped in the smoking room for a chat with him.
Meanwhile, Madeleine, in her room, was doing some thinking. It was too early to dress and she had some other things to think out first, anyway.
At last she rose and went down the hall to her mother's rooms.
"Mother," she said, patting the fine white hair, "I—"
"I know what that means," and Mrs. Selden drew her head away from her daughter's caressing hand. "Now, Madeleine, I haven't a cent for you. It's outrageous, the way you go on. You know, very well, if Andrew had the least idea how you are managing, he would—"
"Yes, what would he do? He hasn't the power to do anything—"
"Don't be too sure. You know Andrew—but I know the world better than you do, I know men better than you do—and you needn't think that because Andrew never has broken loose, he never will!"
"Broken loose—how?"
"Reprimand you—disgrace you—punish you—"
"Disgrace! Punish! Mother, what do you mean?"
"Oh, hush up, child—don't think I don't know things! Andrew and I both spoil you—we're both too lenient with you—but—we both know—"
"Pooh! What do you know? Only that I lose a lot at Bridge! Well, I can't help it, if I have bad luck. I'm a first-class player—any one will tell you that. But I'm having a run of ill luck. Everybody has 'em, and they have to be followed by a streak of good luck. Everybody knows that. And when the good luck comes I'll pay back all I've borrowed from you or anybody else—and more, too. Now, come, Mother, be a duck and let me have at least a few hundreds."
"Madeleine, I can't."
"That means you won't."
"Take it either way you like—but you won't get any."
"Then I'll tell you what I think of you! I think you're a horrid old woman who refuses her own child—her only child, a few paltry dollars! You care nothing at all for my pleasure! You've feathered your own nest—or, rather I feathered it for you, by my marriage with a rich man! You have everything you want—ease, comfort, luxury—while I, a rich man's wife, haven't a cent to call my own!"
"Why haven't you? Because you've thrown it away gambling. Your husband gives you an enormous allowance—he even gives you extra money when you ask for it—and now, that you've reached the limit of his endurance and generosity, you come to me, to ask for the tiny sum I've saved—"
"Oh, have you, Mother? Have you saved a sum—do lend it to me, dearie? I'm sure I'll win to-night—and, besides, I'll tell you a secret—maybe—just maybe, you know, soon I won't have any trouble to get all the money I want—"
"Heavens, Madeleine, what do you mean by such talk? What are you going to do?"
"Nothing to make you look like that! Only—just maybe—Andrew will give me a lot of money."
"You're going to give up gambling? Is that it? Going to be more the sort of a wife he wants?"
"Maybe—" the pretty face wore a tantalizing smile—"anyway—I've a plan—a perfectly good, right plan. Oh, Mother, it's—but don't ask me, it's a secret—as yet."
"Where are you going to-night?"
"To Emmy Gardner's. But I'm going somewhere else first, and I'm in a hurry to get dressed. So, come across, old dear—that's a love!"
"Haven't got it," and Mrs. Selden returned to her newspaper, with a cold smile at her daughter.
"Mother! don't throw me like that! I tell you I must have it. I can't play to-night unless I pay a debt of last night. I haven't a cent myself—oh, how can you be so heartless!"
"Madeleine, behave yourself. I tell you I haven't more than ten or fifteen dollars in the house."
"I don't believe it"—and Madeleine began to rummage in her mother's dresser drawers.
"Stop that!" cried Mrs. Selden. "If you're so sure of winning to-night, they'll take your I.O.U. for last night's debts."
"That shows how little you know about it," and Madeleine sneered her scorn. "Mother, if you don't give me some money, you'll be sorry!"
"I'll be sorrier if I do. Good-night."
"I hate you!" and Madeleine ground her teeth in passion. "I hate you for a cruel, unnatural parent! I've a notion to turn you out of this house—you horrid old thing! You—"
"Oh, do hush. You act as you used to act when you were a child."
"And you treat me as cruelly as you did then! If you'd brought me up differently—-I might have been a better woman. Oh, you don't know yet how bad I can be—and I will, too—if you don't help me out this time!"
"Go to your room, and get over your tantrum. You'll get no money from me to-night."
Mrs. Selden rose, and practically pushed her daughter through the doorway to the hall.
Madeleine went—seeing there was no hope of achieving her desire, but she went off muttering vengeance, and with a face white with passion.
In her boudoir again, she called her maid.
"Claudine," she said, "you must lend me some money—just for this evening. Come now—there's a dear."
"Willingly, Madame—but, alas, I have none."
"That's not true—you were paid only yesterday."
"But I sent it away—to my poor sister—"
"Claudine, you're lying. Now—see here—if you don't let me have some money—I'll tell your friend Carl about—"
"No, Madame—no, I beg of you—"
The French maid turned pale with apprehension, and looked beseechingly at her determined mistress.
"Yes, I will—I surely will! Now, you know you have some—"
"Only fifty dollars, Madame—as God is my witness, that's all I have."
"Pah! that would do me no good at all! Keep your fifty—but, Claudine, get me Mrs. Sayre on the telephone. And after you get her—leave the room."
"Yes, Madame."
Madeleine stretched out on her chaise longue, smiled a little as she waited.
She looked like some sleek well fed cat, about to seize on its unsuspecting prey.
Perhaps students of such things would have said her gambling instinct was an inheritance from some reckless, swashbuckling ancestor.
Others would hold, and more likely they were right, it was the result of the heedless, rushing pace set by the crowd with whom she lived and moved and danced and had her being.
Yet few of that crowd, if any, played so desperately, so feverishly or so continuously as Madeleine.
And none lost so much. Although really a fine player, she seemed one of those who have persistent bad luck, and if she won, she was quite likely to lose all her winnings on one last high-stake game before she stopped.
She loved the excitement of it, the hazard of it, the uncertainty.
And she had the optimism of the true gambler, who always thinks his luck just about to turn to better and to best, quite undaunted by the fact that it never does.
She reconnoitered. She was in desperate straits. If she didn't pay up last night's debts to-night, before beginning to play, her creditors, two unprincipled women, had threatened to tell her husband of the situation.
Andrew knew she played Bridge—frequently—almost incessantly—but he had no idea of the height of her stakes, or the terrific amounts she lost.
Always before, her mother had helped her out. Always before, she had won enough to tide over, at least. Always before—she had managed by hook or by crook to keep above water.
But to-night she was desperate. Something must be done—and done quickly.
"Mrs. Sayre on the wire," Claudine announced, and as Madeleine took up the receiver, the maid left the room.
"Hello, Rosamond," Madeleine said, "come over a few moments, can't you?"
"Why, hello, Maddy—what in the world for?"
"I just want to see you. Seems 's if I can't get along another minute without seeing you!"
The voice at the other end of the wire gave a short, quick sound of laughter, but there was an uneasy note in it—almost a note of alarm.
"Why, my dear old thing—I can't come now—I'm dressing. Aren't you going to Emmy's to-night?"
"Yes—but not till about eleven."
"I know—but I've an errand first."
"So've I. Look here, Rosamond, you'd better come over here. Slip into a little street frock and run over for a minute. You can walk it in no time—Harrison won't know you're out of the house."
"But why? Why must I do that?" The voice was petulant now, and Madeleine's became more commanding.
"Because I say so. Come along, now!"
She hung up the receiver with a snap, and summoned Claudine again.
"Dress me quickly," she commanded, "all but my gown. Do my hair small and plain. Yes—flesh-colored stockings."
The apt maid understood and with Madeleine's approval did the dark, soft hair into a compact mass that was becoming but not elaborate.
By the time the negligée was thrown over the silken undergarments there came a light tap at the door.
"That will be Mrs. Sayre," Madeleine said; "let her in, Claudine, and disappear."
"Well, sweetie, what's up?" and Rosamond Sayre dropped into an easy chair and lighted a cigarette.
"Just had to see you," returned Madeleine, falling back on the chaise longue. "How's your husband?"
"Harrison? Oh, he's all right."
"Funny little man—isn't he?"
"Yes—why?" Mrs. Sayre seemed in no wise offended.
"But fond of you?"
"As whose husband isn't—if the wife wants him to be?"
"And proud of you?"
"Why shouldn't he be?"
Rosamond Sayre looked at herself in a mirror.
"He'd be blind if he didn't see reason to be proud of me," she said, airily, flicking her cigarette ashes on the rug.
She gave an impression of absolute self-satisfaction. Her beryl eyes flashed with vanity, her great masses of gold-brown hair clustered over her ears and framed a piquant, bewitching face. Her dashing little figure and vivacious gestures betokened self-reliance, as well as self approval.
"Come on, now, Maddy—out with it," she said; "I must run, in ten minutes, at most. Going to scold me, kid me—or borrow money of me?" She eyed her friend rather sharply.
"Good guesser!" Madeleine cried. "The third time conquers. I'm going to borrow money of you."
"Broke—haven't a cent!" and the beryl eyes showed darker glints in them.
"Pooh, don't come that over me. Harrison will give you a thousand in a minute—if you ask him prettily."
"But I wouldn't ask him—for you." Rosamond smoked calmly on.
"Oh, do now—Rosy, listen."
And then Madeleine talked and Rosamond, too, low and earnestly, and very steadily, for several minutes.
And Rosamond Sayre said, "All right—I'll bring you a thousand to-night—at Emmy Gardner's. Be there by eleven?"
"I think so; or a few moments later."
Chapter 2 - The Artists
The pretentiousness of a studio, especially a Washington Square studio, is quite often in inverse proportion to the merit of the pictures it gives up.
But Tommy Locke's studio defeated this description by being a golden mean as to both propositions.
Indeed, Henry Post, the artist's cynical friend, said that Locke's draperies and his canvases showed a wonderfully similar lack of distinction.
And Kate Vallon had quickly added, "Let's call them his appointments and disappointments."
But Tommy Locke had only smiled comfortably and had gone on painting his interminable green and blue landscapes in which, if anybody cared for a certain vague misty charm—they did not find it entirely lacking.
And even if he had no high-backed, gilt-framed Italian arm-chairs and no armor or ragged priests' robes, he often had good-looking bowls of even better looking flowers and he served first-rate tea, and somehow the neighbors loved to drift in and out of his nondescript rooms.
His ways were ways of pleasantness and all his paths were peace, yet though his chums were usually tolerant and broad-minded thinkers, there was little real Bohemianism in evidence, that is, the Bohemianism of what is known as The Village.
His few worthwhile bits of old furniture stood upon worthwhile old rugs and his specimens of artistic junk were few and far between.
Yet, strangely enough, Tommy Locke himself affected the manner of the comic paper artist—at least, to a degree.
He wore his black hair a bit longer than other men, he wore his big round glasses with very heavy tortoise-shell frames, and he wore his collar soft and loose, with a flowing Windsor tie, usually black.
He was chaffed a bit now and then as to his inconsistencies, but it was generally admitted futile to try to get a rise out of old Tommy.
In fact he calmly stated that his get-up was the only real claim he had to being one of the noble army of artists, and Henry Post had glanced at the misty landscapes and murmured, "Some of your titles show latent talent, I think."
"It's so nice to be understood!" Locke had exclaimed. "Yes, I'll say my 'Monotony in Sagebrush' is both meanful and catching."
"If that's all you want you may well have called it 'The Mumps,'" Kate Vallon had reported.
These three and another, one Pearl Jane Cutler, formed a sort of chummy quartette, and, though they chummed but seldom, they did most of it in Tommy's non-committal studio.
"If you'd have a splash of color over that blank looking window," Kate would suggest, and Tommy would wave away the suggestion without a word.
Then would Pearl Jane, who was remarkably suggestive of Little Annie in Enoch Arden, say, plaintively, "I like it all—just as it is," and Tommy's beaming smile would be for her.
They had all finished laughing at her baptismal absurdity—she had been named for the two neighbors on either side of her mother's house—and without a nickname, they accepted her as Pearl Jane. It was as yet a question what she would sign her masterpieces of art, as she hadn't, strictly speaking, produced them yet.
She hadn't been in the city very long, but Washington Square claimed her for its own. She loved it—all four sides—and many of its byways. She dabbled away, with a brush that was, so far, incompetent and irrelevant, but she cheerfully insisted that she was finding herself, and that some day she would paint pictures like Tommy's.
"Heaven forfend!" Post would cry out. "If you must copy, choose the billboard school, or the newspaper cartoon group, but don't take aim for Tommy's greenery dingles and blue glades."
"Beautiful title!" Tommy mused; "'The Blue Glades of Glengowrie'—I'll do that next."
"And that reminds me," Kate said, she was always being inscrutably reminded, "our infant here, our Pearl Jane, has never been to a masquerade! A real one, I mean. She doesn't count the Ivy Club Sociables in her Main Street home. Will you have one for her, Tommy? We'll all help."
"Better yet, I'll paint one for her," Locke said; "then she can see how one really looks."
"No, she can't," Post declared. "You see, in your pictures, so much more is meant than meets the eye—and Pearl Jane wants her eyes met."
"All right, then," and Locke thought a minute. "Not a very big one, you said, didn't you? And, no one asked but our own crowd, you insisted on, didn't you? And you stipulated it would be small and early—am I not right? And if I am not mistaken, you said there's no hurry about it."
But he was set right on all these points, and the masquerade party for Pearl Jane was arranged in exactly the fashion Kate Vallon and Henry Post deemed fitting and proper.
However, their ideas were much in line with Locke's own, and so they made it only a few hours later and a few people larger than he consented to.
Pearl Jane was in ecstasies, and when the night came, and she was togged out in her Dutch Peasant costume, her already bobbed fair hair flying from under her stiff lace cap, she couldn't wait for the hour and ran round to Tommy's early.
She found him, garbed in a monk's robe and cowl, standing before an easel, gazing at one of his own pictures.
"Do you really like it, Pearl Jane?" he said, almost wistfully, as she came up and stood at his side in silence.
"Yes, I do. They can guy you all they like—there's something in your work—something of Manet—I mean Monet—"
"Eeny, meeny, miney, mo!" he laughed, and turned to look at her. "Why, bless my soul, madam, you've suddenly grown up!"
"No, that's 'cause this frock is longer than I usually wear. Do you like it?"
"Do blue and yellow make green? Yes, I like it. You're a picture!"
"What's the title?" asked another voice, and Kate and Post appeared.
"I think it might be called 'The Puritan's Carouse,' Locke said, wresting his glance from the pretty Dutch girl. "Hello, Kate, you're quite all right as a Contadina—Henry, not quite so good as a Spanish Don."
"Ah, I'm not a Spanish Don—your mistake. I'm a Portuguese Man o' War."
"You look more like an Oscar Wilde."
"Take that back! Call me anything but like that overrated, underbred gyastyockus!"
"I thought he was a great poet," Pearl Jane said, wonderingly. "I never read any of his—"
"Don't!" Post said, "I forbid it. There's enough for you, yet unread. Pearl Jane, dear, without touching that Purple Jellyfish!"
"Some of his poems are fine," Kate began, but Locke interrupted her:
"Only one—'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' is a great poem, but nothing else of his is worthy of consideration."
Kate Vallon began to quote:
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword.
"Oh, I hate it!" Pearl Jane shuddered. "If it's like that, I don't want to read it!"
"No, you don't," Locke agreed; "besides, he's out of date now. You stick to your John Masefield and Carl Sandburg."
"I don't know them very well," the girl acknowledged, "they're rather hard, I think."
Now Pearl Jane Cutler was by no means a child or an ignoramus. But she had been simply brought up in a small town, and though fairly well grounded in the rudiments of Life and Literature, she had still quite a bit to learn, and was swallowing it in chunks—anaconda like. She was twenty-two, and carried a little more flesh on her young bones than the average all-city girl did. Kate Vallon, half a dozen years older, was keeping an eye on her, and she thought maybe, perhaps, possibly, after a thousand years of study. Pearl Jane might learn to paint something noisier than clay pots and onions.
Chinese Charley appeared in the doorway.
"They arrive," he said, a little laconically.
"Show them up," Tommy ordered, as succinctly, and then the quartette hurried on their masks and the revel began.
Locke was a little surprised at the stream of people that flowed in. He was not inhospitable, and there was room enough, but he thought Post might have told him what he was up to. He said as much to Henry Post, who responded:
"I didn't do it, Tommy, honest, I didn't. But several whom I did invite, just casually said they might bring friends. I couldn't say them nay—now could I?"
"Rather not," said Locke, and turned to greet some new-comers.
But, in his mask, and his concealing robe and cowl, almost no one knew him, and so he had no duties as host. This suited him well enough, and he sauntered about, looking at the hackneyed costumes, recognizing some figure here and there, or mistakenly thinking he did.
The studio looked festive to-night, for Kate and Henry had insisted on a few decorations and had chosen Chinese lanterns and artificial cherry blossoms. These delighted the soul of Charley, Locke's house-boy, and he gazed up at them, now and then, beatifically picturesque.
He was devoted to Locke, though so quiet of manner and scant of speech that there were no protestations, but he showed his affection in immaculate housekeeping and meticulous obedience to orders.
The place was not large; only the second floor entire, and a room or two on the first floor. Supper would be served downstairs, so the big studio and one or two smaller rooms could be used for dancing. This left a small room for a smoking den, and Locke's own bedroom for a ladies' dressing room.
A small orchestra arrived and soon proved that it could make jazz music out of all proportion to its size.
Locke asked a Carmen to dance with him, thinking he knew her, but found he was again mistaken.
"Strange how merely a mask can disguise one so thoroughly," he said; "I'd think the face only a small part of a personality."
"Then it proves, practically, that the face is the whole individual," Carmen returned, turning her mask a trifle until he saw a lovely cheek and curving lips. "But as you've never seen me before, you couldn't be expected to know me."
"I didn't expect to, I merely thought you were someone else."
"I know almost no one here," Carmen said; "of course it makes no difference while we're masked, but at supper time I shall know nobody."
"That's all right, I'll introduce you about, and you'll have made dozens of friends among your partners by that time. . . ."
"Who are you, Sir Monk, tell me that, at any rate."
"My name would mean nothing to you—it's entirely uncelebrated."
"Tell me all the same"—the pretty voice was peremptory.
"Smith," he replied, "John Smith."
"And you call that name uncelebrated? One of the best known in the country. Fie, fie, Mr. Smith—just for that I shall call you John."
"And I may call you?"
"Mary—Mary Smith."
"Miss Smith, then. I never begin to call the ladies by their first names until midnight—at least."
"Tell me something—who is that woman in the gorgeous Oriental costume?"
"Where?"
"Over toward the hall door. See?"
"Oh, yes, I see. I haven't the faintest idea who she is. But as I say, they're all disguised from me. Besides, with this silly cowl, I can only see straight ahead! I might as well be a horse in blinders!"
"Can't you take it off?"
"And spoil my real Cistercian rig! Never! Besides, I haven't my tonsure on straight."
"Do you know the host?" Carmen asked, suddenly.
"Do you mean, do I know him? or, do I know which one he is?"
"Both."
"Yes, I am acquainted with him," Locke said, truthfully, and mendaciously added, "but I don't know which one he is. That Spanish Don, maybe. Don't you know Locke at all?"
"No, but I've heard a lot of him."
"Good, bad or rotten?"
"Not the last—they all say he's a trump. But queer."
"Queer, how?"
"Sort of a vagabond—goes off on jaunts by himself—"
"Painting?"
"I suppose so. Is his work any good?"
"Middling. Not very little and not very big. But I think he's happy in it."
"I'm only happy when I'm dancing."
"My heavens, I can't dance all night!"
"There are others! That's what I was hinting!"
"How prettily rude you are! That's the beauty of a masquerade—one can say anything."
"Can one? Then listen! I know you! I know who you are!"
"Do you?" said Locke. "Well, I'm not so overwhelmed at that! I know who you are!"
"Ah, but I'm telling the truth—and you're fibbing!"
And with a merry trill of laughter, Carmen disengaged herself from his clasping arm and ran away.
"Foolish chit!" Locke thought, and wandered about, looking for Pearl Jane.
The Dutch Girl was dancing with a Sailor Boy, and Locke stood to one side and watched them.
"Funny thing about Pearl Jane," he thought; "she's womanly—and all that—and yet she's little more than a child. Lucky she has Kate beside her—Kate's a trump. But Kate's party here to-night is rubbish! I am bored already. However, the kiddy wanted her Bal Masque, and now she's got it. I hope she's enjoying herself. I wonder what she'll grow up to. It will take a jolt of some sort to waken her. She's a dear thing—but—well, she's Pearl Jane!"
And then, he discovered he could claim her for a dance, and at once did so.
"How's the party?" he inquired, as they swung off.
"Oh, it's blissful! It's double-distilled Paradise!"
"There, there, save your adjectives! Don't be foolishly extravagant!"
"But don't you think so? Don't you just love it? All the lights and the people, and the jewels—"
"Mock jewels."
"What of it? Don't be cynical to-night, Tommy—dear."
His heart missed a beat, as he caught something in her tone that he had never heard there before.
He must have shown his perception of it, for he saw a rosy blush beneath the edge of her little mask, and he hastened to say, "No, it doesn't matter that they're mock jewels—for they're mock people."
"Yes," she said, softly, "all but you and me."
Locke was nonplussed. He didn't know whether Pearl Jane was trying to make love to him, or whether the gayety of the occasion had gone to her head a little. He decided on the latter opinion, and steered the talk into a safer channel.
And yet, he couldn't help thinking, she was very sweet, the soft little chin that nestled against his shoulder, the curve of the cheek that still showed pink, and most of all the bright happy eyes that now and then met his through the eyeholes of their masks.
Clearly, he decided, I'd better get away from her. She'll enchant me in another minute—and that won't do. Little Pearl Jane! Waking up! Oh, Lord!
So, with a graceful bow, he handed her to a waiting and eager Clown, and sauntered off himself to do a duty dance with Kate.
Not but that he liked Kate Vallon, but after all, Locke was not overly fond of dancing, and he had a dim idea of retreating to the smoking room as soon as might be.
"Buck up," said Kate, after a few rounds, "you're a good dancer, Tommy, but you have no soul in it."
"I'd rather paint," Locke returned. "Wouldn't you, Kate?"
"Yes, I would. I'd rather do lots of things. But we're a few years older than Pearl Jane, or Henry, either. How old are you, Tommy?"
"Twenty-eight; why?"
"So'm I. Well, after twenty, nowadays, one gets fed up with dancing."
"Nonsense, lots of old ones love it. I never was keen about it. Want to sit out a while?"
"Yes, but not with you! Find Jack Henderson for me, won't you? He's a Continental Soldier."
Not at all minding Kate's candor, Locke went after the man she preferred. He looked about in the rooms, and then went downstairs in his search. The staircase was crowded, and as he passed a "Winter," he heard her say, "How very warm it is—I must have some air!"
He turned to see if he could be of assistance, but others were nearer her, so he went on.
He found Henderson and sent him to Kate.
"My, but I'm glad to be summoned," the cheery Henderson said, as he reached her. "I didn't dare intrude till I was sent for."
After a few moments they concluded the room was too crowded for chat, and they started for a tiny balcony that gave from a rear window.
"What's that?" cried Henderson, as they passed through the little smoking room, dimly lighted and now deserted.
"What's what?"
"That on the floor, behind the table!"
"Looks like a pillow from a couch," and Kate glanced toward some gay colored silk that lay in folds.
"It isn't! Kate—stay back!"
Henderson took another step, and gave a startled exclamation.
"Keep back, I tell you, Kate. There's been some awful accident. Call some one—some man. Call Locke and Post first. Wait, don't raise a general alarm. Get that Chinese servant."
"What is it, Jack? I will see! Oh, my God!"
Kate Vallon pulled herself together by strong will power.
