XXVII
RAIN
Suddenly the figure of a man stepped out before us. It was too dark tosee his face, but his voice had a familiar sound as he said:
"It's all right. He's there. I saw him go in a half-hour ago."
"Very good. My man, Sweetwater," explained Mr. Gryce, turning for aninstant towards me; then, in hurried tones to the other, "Do you knowon which floor he is to be found; and whether the man at the barsuspects what's up?"
"If he does, he's pretty quiet about it. All looks natural inside. Butyou can't tell what whispers have gone about. As for him, he's chosenhis place with his usual indifference to consequences. He's in one ofthe attic rooms, sir, well back, and can be reached from the outsideby means of a shed that slopes up almost to the window-ledge. If hewanted to escape, he could easily do so by a drop of only four feet.But I have left a man on watch there and our young gentleman wouldfall into arms that wouldn't let him go in a hurry. Will you comearound that way? There's a light in the window and there's neithercurtain nor shade to hinder a man's looking in. If you wish, I cancrawl up on the roof I spoke of and take a peep at our doves beforewe venture upon disturbing them."
"It can do no harm," rejoined the older detective; "and if the girl iswhere she can be seen, this gentleman can go up afterwards andidentify her. It will mean surer and quieter work than approachingthem by the stairway. The house is full, I suppose?"
"Chuck." And with this characteristic word Sweetwater melted frombefore us as if he had been caught up in one of the swirls of wind andrain that ever and anon swept through the alley, dashing our faceswith wet and making our feet unsteady on the slippery pavement.
I began to feel strange and unlike myself. The night, the storm, theuncongenial place, our more than uncongenial errand, were having theireffect, lending to that dark entrance into one of the worst corners ofour great city a sense of mysterious awe which has caused it to remainin my memory as something quite out of the ordinary experiences oflife. It was not a long alley, and we soon reached the light I havementioned. We could hear voices now, loud voices raised one moment incontention, the next in drunken cheer; and, thrilling through it all,a woman's tones singing some bewildering melody. It was not the voiceof Mille-fleurs. I could never have mistaken that--but it was a youngvoice, and did not lack sweetness in the low notes. As I was listeningto it, something flew flapping into my face. It was a piece of damppaper peeled from some billboard by a wandering gust and sentscurrying through the air. I tore it away from my eyes, drawing adeep breath like a person suddenly released from suffocation; but Ishall not soon forget the effect of that cold slap in the face at themoment when my every nerve was on tension. Mr. Gryce, who had seennothing,--it was hardly possible to see in the deluge which now sweptdown upon us,--gave me a pull which drew me from before the swingingdoor I was unconsciously making for, into a corner where I foundmyself more or less shielded from the wind if not from the rain. Thealley had an L, and leading down from this L was a narrow passage,within which we now stood, surrounded by reeking walls and facing(whenever the fury of the storm abated sufficiently for us to look up)an opening into what might be called a labyrinth of back-yards. As Iwas bracing myself to meet all alarms, real or imaginary, associatedwith this noisome place, I beheld a sudden figure emerge from theopening and hastily approach us. It was Sweetwater again. He had justdescended from his clamber over the roofs, where he seemed to be asmuch at home as a cat.
"Lucky that it rains so," he panted; "keeps the kids in. Otherwisesome of us would have been spotted long ago. There are about fifty ofthem in this one house." Then I heard him whisper in the ear that wasnecessarily very near mine:
"It's all right up there. I can see his figure plainly. He's sittingwith his back to the window, but there's no mistaking LeightonGillespie. He's in dinner dress, just as he came from his own table inFifth Avenue. The girl----"
"Well, what of the girl?"
"Is in one of her heavy sleeps. I could not see her face, only herhair, which hung all about her----"
"I would know her hair," I put in.
The two men drew a step aside and whispered together. Then Mr. Grycecame back, and, putting his mouth to my ear, asked if I had enoughagility to mount the shed as Sweetwater had done. "He says the wood isslippery, but the climb up quite practicable for an agile man. He hadno difficulty, and if you will catch hold of the window-casings as yougo along----"
"Let me see the place," said I.
Sweetwater at once drew me down the passage into the open place in therear. Here wind and storm had their will again, and for a moment Icould neither hear nor see anything but a vast expanse of hollowdarkness, lit here and there with misty lights, and reverberating withall sorts of sounds, among which the shrieking wind wailed longest andmost furiously.
"Up there!" called a voice in my ear, and then I became aware of anarm pointing over my shoulder towards a dark incline running up over aflight of stairs, upon the lower step of which I had almost stumbled."That's your road. Can you take it?"
Jamming my hat over my head, I looked up. A lighted square met my eyesin the blank side of the wall, against which this none too desirableroad, as he called it, ran up.
"The window is wide open," said I.
"As you see," said he.
"I shall make a noise; he will hear me----"
"He didn't hear _me_----"
"That's no proof he won't hear _me_. But I forget the gale, and thatsound--what is it?"
"Tin cans rattling; loose in some gutter, I suppose----"
"It is infernal." Then with sudden resolution--a resolution I hardlyunderstand, for I certainly did not feel called upon to risk eitherself-respect or safety in this cause--I cried out: "I'll try for it;though it's long since I put my agility to the proof. But how am I toget onto the roof?"
For reply, Sweetwater uttered a low but peculiar call, and a shadownear by became a man.
"Lend your back to this gentleman," said he; and as I took advantageof the assistance thus afforded me and worked my way up onto the ledgeover his head, he softly added:
"Catch hold of everything that offers, and be careful your feet don'tslip. When you're up, give one look and come down. We will be on handto catch you when you get to the edge of the roof."
The rain was dripping from my hat to such an extent that it nearlyblinded me. I tore it off and flung it at their feet; then I startedon my perilous climb.
"IN TWO MINUTES I WAS UNDER THAT OPEN WINDOW"]
It was a difficult one, but not so difficult as I had expected; and intwo minutes I was under that open window. A tangle of ropes struck myhead--clothes-lines, I suppose. Laying hold of them, I steadied myselfbefore looking in. As I did so, a consciousness of my position madethe moment a bewildering one. I thought of Hope and what hersurprise would be could she see me in my present situation on the peakof this sloping roof, thirty feet above the ground. Hope! the wordbrought resolution also. I would look in upon this man with eyesschooled to their duty, but unsharpened by hate. If there wasforbearance due him, I would try and exercise that forbearance,remembering always that he was an object of affection to the woman Iloved.
Was this why I, for the first time, saw him as he may have looked toher and probably did? He was seated in such a way that only hisprofile was visible beyond the casing around which I peered. But thatprofile struck me forcibly, and, forgetting my errand, I allowedmyself a moment's study of the face I had never rightly seen tillthen.
I was astonished at the result; astonished at the effect it had uponme. Leighton Gillespie seen with his brothers was not the LeightonGillespie I looked upon now. Beheld thus by himself he was animpressive figure. Lacking George's height and Alfred's regularity offeature he was apt to be regarded by superficial or prejudicedobservers as the one plain man in an exceptionally handsome family.But I saw now that this was not so. He had attractions of his ownwhich could bear comparison with those of most other men; and,relieved from too close comparison with these two conspicuouspers
onalities, the traits of his dark, melancholy countenance cameout, and in the regard of his sad and preoccupied eye was felt a charmwhich might have ripened into fascination had no dark secretbeclouded their depths or interfered with the natural expression offeelings that must once have been both natural and spontaneous. Had hebeen more fortunate in his tastes or more able to put restraint uponhis passions, he might, with that eye and smile, have been one ofthose men whose influence baffles the insight of the psychologist, andfrom whose magnetic personality spring innumerable benefits to thoseof his day and generation.
All this was forcibly impressed upon me as I knelt in the pouringrain, looking in upon his face at this momentous crisis of his life,and, had I known it, of my own also.
I had feared to advance my head too far lest he should be attracted bythe movement and so detect my presence at the window. Consequently Ihad seen as yet nothing of Mille-fleurs, and but little of the room.This would not do, and I was just preparing to extend my view furtherwhen the face I was watching sank forward out of sight and a groancame to my ears so thrilling and heartbroken that my own heart stoppedbeating in my bewilderment and surprise. From whose lips had thisexpression of anguish sprung? From hers? It had not sounded like awoman's voice. Could it be----
Again! What could it--did it, mean? Had Leighton Gillespie receivedsome warning of the fate which at this moment hung over him, and wasit his voice I heard lifted in these heartbroken accents? I waswilling to risk everything to see. Thrusting my head forward, I lookedboldly into the room, and momentary as the glance was, or seemed tobe, I have never forgotten the dolorous and awe-compelling pictureupon which it fell.
By the light of a guttering candle, whose blowing flame threatenedevery minute to go out, I saw a wretched pallet drawn up against adirty and mouldering wall. On this pallet lay a woman, with just aragged counterpane covering limbs I had so lately seen moving inrhythmical measure. Her hair--those bewildering curls, the like ofwhich I had never before seen and would never see again, lay about herwherever those faded rags failed to reach. It hid her arms, it framedher temples, and, flowing away, coiled in great masses over the sideof that pallet and onto the floor it seemed to richen with its wealth.But it did not hide her face. Either she had moved or her locks hadbeen drawn aside since Sweetwater crouched in my place, for now herfeatures were plainly visible and in those features I had nodifficulty in recognising--Mille-fleurs.
Beside her, and drawn up so close that the rich broadcloth of hissleeve brushed the foul bed and lost itself among those overflowingcurls, sat Leighton Gillespie, with his head in his hands, weeping asa man weeps but once in a lifetime.
There was no mistaking that grief. Real heart agony cannot besimulated; and, touched with awe for what I could not understand, Iwas about to slip away from my post, when he gave an impetuous start,roused himself, and glanced in sudden anger towards a door set in thewall directly opposite me. Another instant he was on his feet, withhis hands held out across the prostrate figure before him, in anattitude of jealous love such as I have never seen equalled. What hadhe seen or heard? The door was closed, yet he seemed to fearintrusion. Whose? Not mine, for his eyes did not turn towards thewindow, but remained fixed upon this door. Had the sound of stepsreached him from the hall? Probably, for, as I watched the door withhim, I beheld the knob turn, then the door itself open, slowly atfirst, then more quickly, till it suddenly fell back, disclosing thequiet form and composed countenance of the old detective I had leftbehind me in the dark corner of the passage at the side of the house.
At the same instant a voice whispered from over my shoulder into myear:
"Lie still; or slip silently down to the officers stationed below. Youwere so long that Mr. Gryce became impatient."
Up till then I had supposed that only a moment had elapsed since Ifirst looked in.
"I will stay," I whispered back. I saw that Leighton was about tospeak.
"Who are you?" I heard him demand of the intruder, in a passion sogreat he failed to note the identity of the man he thus accosted. "Ihave a right to this room. I have paid for it--Ah!" He had justrecognised the detective.
With a quick turn he drew the coverlet over the face he seemed toguard so jealously, then with an air of command, which was at oncesolemn and peremptory, he pointed to the hat which naturally rested onMr. Gryce's head, and said:
"Respect for the dead! You will uncover, Mr. Gryce."
"The dead?" repeated the astonished detective, striding hurriedly intothe room. "The dead? Is this girl dead?"
But his doubt, if doubt it were, disappeared before the look withwhich Leighton Gillespie regarded him.
"Dead!" that gentleman declared. Then as Mr. Gryce instinctively baredhis head, this strange, this incomprehensible man advanced a step, andin tones inconceivably touching and dignified, added this shortsentence:
"To respect her is to respect me; this woman is my wife."