After a fortnight of his new life, Philip took stock of himself and his belongings. In the first place, then, he owned a new name, taken bodily from certain documents which he had brought with him from England. Further, as Mr. Merton Ware, he was the monthly tenant of a small but not uncomfortable suite of rooms on the top story of a residential hotel in the purlieus of Broadway. He had also, apparently, been a collector of newspapers of certain dates, all of which contained some such paragraph as this:
Early on Monday morning, the police of the city were invited to investigate a case of curious disappearance. Mr. Douglas Romilly, an English shoe manufacturer, who travelled out from England on board the Elletania, arrived at the Waldorf Hotel at four o'clock on Saturday afternoon and was shown to the reservation made for him. Within an hour he was enquired for by several callers, who were shown to his room without result. The apartment was found to be empty and nothing has since been seen or heard of Mr. Romilly. The room assigned to him, which could only have been occupied for a few minutes, has been locked up and the keys handed to the police. A considerable amount of luggage is in their possession, and certain documents of a somewhat curious character. From cables received early this afternoon, it would appear that the Douglas Romilly Shoe Company, one of the oldest established firms in England, is in financial difficulties.
Then there was a paragraph in a paper of later date:
The police have been unable to discover any trace of the missing Englishman. From further cables to hand, it appears that he was in possession of a considerable sum of money, which must have been on his person at the time of disappearance, and it is alleged that there was also a large amount, with which he had intended to make purchases for his business, standing to his credit at a New York bank. Nothing has since been discovered, however, amongst his belongings, of the slightest financial value, nor does any bank in New York admit holding a credit on behalf of the missing man.
"Perhaps it is time," Philip murmured, "that these were destroyed."
He tore the newspapers into pieces and threw them into his waste-basket. On his writing-table were forty or fifty closely written pages of manuscript. In his pocketbook were sixteen hundred dollars, and a document indicating a credit for a very much larger amount at the United Bank of New York, in favor of Merton Ware and another. The remainder of his belongings were negligible. He stood at the window and looked out across the city, the city into whose labyrinths he was so eager to penetrate—the undiscovered country. By day and night its voices were in his ears, the rattle and roar of the overhead railway, the clanging of the street cars, the heavy traffic, the fainter but never ceasing foot-fall of the multitudes. He had sat there before dawn and watched the queer, pinky-white light steal with ever widening fingers through the darkness, heard the yawn of the city as it seemed to shiver and tremble before the battle of the day. At twilight he had watched the lights spring up one by one, at first like pin pricks in the distance, growing and widening until the grotesque shapes of the buildings from which they sprung had faded into nothingness, and there was left only a velvet curtain of strangely-lit stars. At a giddy distance below he could trace the blaze of Broadway, the blue lights flashing from the electric wires as the cable cars rushed back and forth, the red and violet glimmer of the sky signs. He knew it all so well, by morning, by noon and night; in rainstorm, storms which he had watched come up from oceanwards in drifting clouds of vapour; and in sunshine, clear, brilliant sunshine, a little hard and austere, to his way of thinking, and unseasonable.
"A week," he muttered. "She said a week. Tonight I will go out."
He looked at himself in the glass. He wore no longer the well-cut clothes of Mr. Douglas Romilly's Saville Row tailor, but a ready-made suit of Schmitt & Mayer's business reach-me-downs, an American felt hat and square-toed shoes.
"She said a week," he repeated. "It's a fortnight to-day. I'll go to the restaurant at the corner. I must find out for myself what all this noise means, what the city has to say."
He turned towards the door and then stopped short. For almost the first time since he had taken up his quarters here, the lift had stopped outside. There was a brief pause, then his bell rang. For a moment Philip hesitated. Then he stepped forward and opened the door, looking out enquiringly at his caller.
"You Mr. Merton Ware?"
He admitted the fact briefly. His visitor was a young woman dressed in a rather shabby black indoor dress, over which she wore an apron. She was without either hat or gloves. Her fingers were stained with purple copying ink, and her dark hair was untidily arranged.
"I live two stories down below," she announced, handing him a little card. "Miss Martha Grimes—that's my name—typewriter and stenographer, you see. The waiter who brings our meals told me he thought you were some way literary, so I just stepped up to show you my prospectus. If you've any typewriting you want doing, I'm on the spot, and I don't know as you'd get it done much cheaper anywhere else—or better."
There was nothing particularly ingratiating about Miss Martha Grimes, but, with the exception of a coloured waiter, she happened to be the first human being with whom Philip had exchanged a word for several days. He felt disinclined to hurry her away.
"Come in," he invited, holding the door open. "So you do typing, eh? What sort of a machine do you use?"
"Remington," she answered. "It's a bit knocked about—a few of the letters, I mean—but I've got some violet ink and I can make a manuscript look all right. Half a dollar a thousand words, and a quarter for carbon copies. Of course, if you'd got a lot of stuff," she went on, her eyes lighting hopefully upon the little collection of manuscript upon his table, "I might quote you a trifle less."
He picked up some of his sheets and glanced at them.
"Sooner or later," he admitted, "I shall have to have this typed. It isn't quite ready yet, though."
He was struck by the curious little light of anticipation which somehow changed her face, and which passed away at his last words. Under pretence of gathering together some of those loose pages, he examined her more closely and realised that he had done her at first scant justice. She was very thin, and the expression of her face was spoilt by the discontented curve of her lips. The shape of her head, however, was good. Her dark hair, notwithstanding its temporary disarrangement, was of beautiful quality, and her eyes, though dull and spiritless-looking, were large and full of subtle promise. He replaced the sheets of manuscript.
"Sit down for a moment," he begged.
"I'd rather stand," she replied.
"Just as you please," he assented, smiling. "I was just wondering what to do about this stuff."
She hesitated for a moment, then a little sulkily she seated herself.
"I suppose you think I'm a pretty forward young person to come up here and beg for work. I don't care if you do," she went on, swinging her foot back and forth. "One has to live."
"I am very pleased that you came," he assured her. "It will be a great convenience to me to have my typing done on the premises, and although I am afraid there won't be much of it, you shall certainly do what there is."
"Story writer?" she enquired.
"I am only a beginner," he told her. "This work I am going to give you is a play."
She looked at him with a shade of commiseration in her face.
"Sickening job, ain't it, writing for the stage unless you've got some sort of pull?"
"This is my first effort," he explained.
"Well, it's none of my business," she said gloomily. "All I want is the typing of it, only you should see some of the truck I've had! I've hated to send in the bill. Waste of good time and paper! I don't suppose yours is like that, but there ain't much written that's any good, anyway."
"You're a hopeful young person, aren't you?" he remarked, taking a cigarette from the mantelpiece and lighting it. "Have one?"
"No, thank you!" she replied, rising briskly to her feet. "I'm not that sort that sits about and smokes cigarettes with strange young men. If you'll let me know when that work's going to be ready, I'll send the janitor up for it."
He smiled deprecatingly.
"You're not afraid of me, by any chance, are you?" he asked.
Her eyes glowed with contempt as she looked him up and down.
"Afraid of you, sir!" she repeated. "I should say not! I've met all sorts of men and I know something about them."
"Then sit down again, please," he begged.
She hesitated for a moment, then subsided once more unwillingly into the chair.
"Don't know as I want to stay up here gossiping," she remarked. "You'd much better be getting on with your work. Give me one of those cigarettes, anyway," she added abruptly.
"Do you live in the building?" he enquired, as he obeyed her behest.
"Two flats below with pop," she replied. "He's a bad actor, very seldom in work, and he drinks. There are just the two of us. Now you know as much as is good for you. You're English, ain't you?"
"I am," Philip admitted.
"Just out, too, by the way you talk."
"I have been living in Jamaica," he told her, "for many years—clerk in an office there."
"Better have stayed where you were, I should think, if you've come here hoping to make a living by that sort of stuff."
"Perhaps you're right," he agreed, "but you see I am here—been here a week or two, in fact."
"Done much visiting around?" she enquired.
"I've scarcely been out," he confessed. "You see, I don't know the city except from my windows. It's wonderful from here after twilight."
"Think so," she replied dully. "It's a hard, hammering, brazen sort of place when you're living in it from hand to mouth. Not but what we don't get along all right," she added, a little defiantly. "I'm not grumbling."
"I am sure you're not," he assented soothingly. "Tell me—to-night I am a little tired of work. I thought of going out. Be a Good Samaritan and tell me where to find a restaurant in Broadway, somewhere where crowds of people go but not what they call a fashionable place. I want to get some dinner—I haven't had anything decent to eat for I don't know how long—and I want to breathe the same atmosphere as other people."
She looked at him a little enviously.
"How much do you want to spend?" she asked bluntly.
"I don't know that that really matters very much. I have some money.
Things are more expensive over here, aren't they?"
"I should go to the New Martin House," she advised him, "right at the corner of this block. It's real swell, and they say the food's wonderful."
"I could go as I am, I suppose?" he asked, glancing down at his clothes.
She stared at him wonderingly.
"Say, where did you come from?" she exclaimed. "You ain't supposed to dress yourself out in glad clothes for a Broadway restaurant, not even the best of them."
"Have you been to this place yourself?" he enquired.
"Nope!"
"Come with me," he invited suddenly.
She arose at once to her feet and threw the remains of her cigarette into the grate.
"Say, Mr. Ware," she pronounced, "I ain't that sort, and the sooner you know it the better, especially if I'm going to do your work. I'll be going."
"Look here," he remonstrated earnestly, "you don't seem to understand me altogether. What do you mean by saying you're not that sort?"
"You know well enough," she answered defiantly. "I guess you're not proposing to give me a supper out of charity, are you?"
"I am asking you to accompany me," he declared, "because I haven't spoken to a human being for a week, because I don't know a soul in New York, because I've got enough money to pay for two dinners, and because I am fiendishly lonely."
She looked at him and it was obvious that she was more than half convinced. Her brightening expression transformed her face. She was still hesitating, but her inclinations were apparent.
"Say, you mean that straight?" she asked. "You won't turn around afterwards and expect a lot of soft sawder because you've bought me a meal?"
"Don't be a silly little fool," he answered good-humouredly. "All I want from you is to sit by my side and talk, and tell me what to order."
Her face suddenly fell.
"No good," she sighed. "Haven't got any clothes."
"If I am going like this," he expostulated, "why can't you go as you are?
Take your apron off. You'll be all right."
"There's my black hat with the ribbon," she reminded herself. "It's no style, and Stella said yesterday she wouldn't be seen in a dime show in it."
"Never you mind about Stella," he insisted confidently. "You clap it on your head and come along."
She swung towards the door.
"Meet you in the hall in ten minutes," she promised. "Can't be any quicker. This is your trouble, you know. I didn't invite myself."
Philip opened the door, a civility which seemed to somewhat embarrass her.
"I shall be waiting for you," he declared cheerfully.
Philip stepped into his own little bedroom and made scanty preparations for this, his first excursion. Then he made his way down into the shabby hall and was seated there on the worn settee when his guest descended. She was wearing a hat which, so far as he could judge, was almost becoming. Her gloves, notwithstanding their many signs of mending, were neat, her shoes carefully polished, and although her dress was undeniably shabby, there was something in her carriage which pleased him. Her eyes were fixed upon his from the moment she stepped from the lift. She was watching for his expression half defiantly, half anxiously.
"Well, you see what I look like," she remarked brusquely. "You can back out of it, if you want to."
"Don't be silly," he replied. "You look quite all right. I'm not much of a beau myself, you know. I bought this suit over the counter the other day, without being measured for it or anything."
"Guess you ain't used to ready-made clothes," she observed, as they stepped outside.
"You see, in England—and the Colonies," he added hastily, "things aren't so expensive as here. What a wonderful city this is of yours, Martha!"
"Miss Grimes, please," she corrected him.
"I beg your pardon," he apologised.
"That's just what I was afraid of," she went on querulously. "You're beginning already. You think because you're giving me a meal, you can take all sorts of liberties. Calling me by my Christian name, indeed!"
"It was entirely a slip," he assured her. "Tell me what theatre that is across the way?"
She answered his question and volunteered other pieces of information. Philip gazed about him, as they walked along Broadway, with the eager curiosity of a provincial sightseer. She laughed at him a little scornfully.
"You'll get used to all the life and bustle presently," she told him. "It won't seem so wonderful to you when you walk along here without a dollar to bless yourself with, and your silly plays come tumbling back. Now this is the Martin House. My! Looks good inside, don't it?"
They crossed the threshold, Philip handed his hat to the attendant and they stood, a little undecided, at the top of the brilliantly-lit room. A condescending maître d'hotel showed them to a retired table in a distant corner, and another waiter handed them a menu.
"You know, half of this is unintelligible to me," Philip confessed.
"You'll have to do the ordering—that was our bargain, you know."
"You must tell me how much you want to spend, then?" she insisted.
"I will not," he answered firmly. "What I want is a good dinner, and for this once in my life I don't care what it costs. I've a few hundred dollars in my pocket, so you needn't be afraid I shan't be able to pay the bill. You just order the things you like, and a bottle of claret or anything else you prefer."
She turned to the waiter, and, carefully studying the prices, she gave him an order.
"One portion for two, remember, of the fish and the salad," she enjoined.
"Two portions of the chicken, if you think one won't be enough."
She leaned back in her place.
"It's going to cost you, when you've paid for the claret, a matter of four dollars and fifty cents, this dinner," she said, "and I guess you'll have to give the waiter a quarter. Are you scared?"
He laughed at her once more.
"Not a bit!"
She looked at his long, delicate fingers—studied him for a moment. Notwithstanding his clothes, there was an air of breeding about him, unconcealable, a thing apart, even, from his good looks.
"Clerk, were you?" she remarked. "Seems to me you're used to spending two dollars on a meal all right. I'm not!"
"Neither am I," he assured her. "One doesn't have much opportunity of spending money in—Jamaica."
"You seem kind of used to it, somehow," she persisted. "Have you come into money, then?"
"I've saved a little," he explained, with a rather grim smile, "and
I've—well, shall we say come into some?"
"Stolen it, maybe," she observed indifferently.
"Should you be horrified if I told that I had?"
"I don't know," she answered. "I'm one of those who's lived honest, and I sometimes wonder whether it pays."
"It's a great problem," he sighed.
"It is that," she admitted gloomily. "I've got a friend—she used to live in our place, just below me—Stella Kimbell, her name is. She and I learnt our typewriting together and started in the same office. We stood it, somehow, for three years, sometimes office work, sometimes at home. We didn't have much luck. It was always better for me than for Stella, because she was good-looking, and I'm not."
"I shouldn't say that," he remonstrated. "You've got beautiful eyes, you know."
"You stop it!" she warned him firmly. "My eyes are my own, and I'll trouble you not to make remarks about them."
"Sorry," Philip murmured, duly crushed.
"The men were after her all the time," the girl continued, reminiscently. "Last place we were at, a dry goods store not far from here, the heads of the departments used to make her life fairly miserable. She held out, though, but what with fines, and one thing or another, they forced her to leave. So I did the same. We drifted apart then for a while. She got a job at an automobile place, and I was working at home. I remember the night she came to me—I was all alone. Pop had got a three-line part somewhere and was bragging about it at all the bars in Broadway. Stella came in quite suddenly and almost out of breath.
"'Kid,' she said, 'I'm through with it.'
"'What do you mean?' I asked her.
"Then she threw herself down on the sofa and she sobbed—I never heard a girl cry like that in all my life. She shrieked, she was pretty nearly in hysterics, and I couldn't get a word out of her. When she was through at last, she was all limp and white. She wouldn't tell me anything. She simply sat and looked at the stove. Presently she got up to go. I put my hands on her shoulders and I forced her back in the chair.
"'You've got to tell me all about it, Stella,' I insisted.
"And then of course I heard the whole story. She'd got fired again. These men are devils!"
"Don't tell me more about it unless you like," he begged sympathetically.
"Where is she now?"
"In the chorus of 'Three Frivolous Maids.' She comes in here regularly."
"Sorry for herself?"
"Not she! Last time I saw her she told me she wouldn't go back into an office, or take on typewriting again, for anything in the world. She was looking prettier than ever, too. There's a swell chap almost crazy about her. Shouldn't wonder if she hasn't got an automobile."
"Well, she answers our question one way, then," he remarked thoughtfully. "Tell me, Miss Grimes, is everything to eat in America as good as this fish?"
"Some cooking here," she observed, looking rather regretfully at her empty plate. "I told you things were all right. There's grilled chicken—Maryland chicken—coming, and green corn."
"Have I got to eat the corn like that man opposite?" he asked anxiously.
"You can eat it how you like," she answered.
"Watch me, if you want to. I don't care. I ain't tasted green corn since
I can remember, and I'm going to enjoy it."
"You don't like your claret, I'm afraid," he remarked.
She sipped it and set down the glass a little disparagingly.
"If you want to know what I would like," she said, "it's just a Martini cocktail. We don't drink wines over here as much as you folk, I guess."
He ordered the cocktails at once. Every now and then he watched her. She ate delicately but with a healthy and unashamed appetite. A little colour came into her cheeks as the room grew warmer, her lower lip became less uncompromising. Suddenly she laid down her knife and fork. Her eyes were agleam with interest. She pulled at his sleeve.
"Say, that's Stella!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Look, she's coming this way! Don't she look stunning!"
A girl, undeniably pretty, with dark, red-gold hair, wearing a long ermine coat and followed by a fashionably dressed young man, was making her way up the room. She suddenly recognised Philip's companion and came towards her with outstretched hand.
"If it isn't Martha!" she cried. "Isn't this great! Felix, this is Miss Grimes—Martha Grimes, you know," she added, calling to the young man who was accompanying her. "You must remember—why, what's the matter with you, Felix?"
She broke off in her speech. Her companion was staring at Philip, who was returning his scrutiny with an air of mild interrogation.
"Say," the young man enquired, "didn't I meet you on the Elletania?
Aren't you Mr. Douglas Romilly?"
Philip shook his head.
"My name is Ware," he pronounced, "Merton Ware. I have certainly never been on the Elletania and I don't remember having met you before."
The young man whose name was Felix appeared almost stupefied.
"Gee whiz!" he muttered. "Excuse me, sir, but I never saw such a likeness before—never!"
"Well, shake hands with Miss Grimes quickly and come along," Stella enjoined. "Remember I only have half an hour for dinner now. You coming to see the show, Martha?"
"Not to-night," that young woman declared firmly.
The two passed on after a few more moments of amiable but, on the part of the young man, somewhat dazed conversation. Philip had resumed the consumption of his chicken. He raised an over-filled glass to his lips steadily and drank it without spilling a drop.
"Mistook me for some one," he remarked coolly.
She nodded.
"Man who disappeared from the Waldorf Astoria. They made quite a fuss about him in the newspapers. I shouldn't have said you were the least like him—to judge by his pictures, anyway."
Philip shrugged his shoulders. He seemed very little interested.
"I don't often read the newspapers. … So that is Stella."
"That is Stella," she assented, a little defiantly. "And if I were she—I mean if I were as good-looking as she is—I'd be in her place."
"I wonder whether you would?" he observed thoughtfully.
"Oh! don't bother me with your problems," she replied. "Does it run to coffee?"
"Of course it does," he agreed, "and a liqueur, if you like."
"If you mean a cordial, I'll have some of that green stuff," she decided.
"Don't know when I shall get another dinner like this again."
"Well, that rests with you," he assured her. "I am very lonely just now.
Later on it will be different. We'll come again next week, if you like."
"Better see how you feel about it when the time comes," she answered practically. "Besides, I'm not sure they'd let me in here again. Did you see Stella's coat? Fancy feeling fur like that up against your chin! Fancy—"
She broke off and sipped her coffee broodingly.
"Those things are immaterial in themselves," he reminded her. "It's just a question how much happiness they have brought her, whether the thing pays or not."
"Of course it pays!" she declared, almost passionately. "You've never seen my rooms or my drunken father. I can tell you what they're like, though. They're ugly, they're tawdry, they're untidy, when I've any work to do, they're scarcely clean. Our meals are thrown at us—we're always behind with the rent. There isn't anything to look at or listen to that isn't ugly. You haven't known what it is to feel the grim pang of a constant hideousness crawling into your senses, stupefying you almost with a sort of misery—oh, I can't describe it!"
"I have felt all those things," he said quietly.
"What did you do?" she demanded. "No, perhaps you had luck. Perhaps it's not fair to ask you that. It wouldn't apply. What should you do if you were me, if you had the chance to get out of it all the way that she has?"
"I am not a woman," he reminded her simply. "If I answer you as an outsider, a passer-by—mind, though, one who thinks about men and women—I should say try one of her lesser sins, one of the sins that leaves you clean. Steal, for instance."
"And go to prison!" she protested angrily. "How much better off would you be there, I wonder, and what about when you came out? Pooh! Pay your bill and let's get out of this."
He obeyed, and they made their way into the crowded street. He paused for a moment on the pavement. The pleasure swirl was creeping a little into his veins.
"Would you like to go to a theatre?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"You do as you like. I'm going home. You needn't bother about coming with me, either."
"Don't be foolish," he protested. "I only mentioned a theatre for your sake. Come along."
They walked down Broadway and turned into their own street. They entered the tenement building together and stepped into the lift. She held out her hand a little abruptly.
"Good night!"
"Good night!" he answered. "You get out first, don't you? I'll polish that stuff up to-night, the first part of it, so that you can get on with the typing."
Some half-developed fear which had been troubling her during the walk home, seemed to have passed. Her face cleared.
"Don't think I am ungrateful," she begged, as the lift stopped. "I haven't had a good time like this for many months. Thank you, Mr. Ware, and good night!"
She stepped through the iron gates on to her own floor, and Philip swung up to his rooms. Somehow, he entered almost light-heartedly. The roar of the city below was no longer provocative. He felt as though he had stretched out a hand towards it, as though he were in the way of becoming one of its children.
A few nights later Philip awoke suddenly to find himself in a cold sweat, face to face with all the horrors of an excited imagination. Once more he felt his hand greedy for the soft flesh of the man he hated, tearing its way through the stiff collar, felt the demoniacal strength shooting down his arm, the fever at his finger tips. He saw the terrified face of his victim, a strong man but impotent in his grasp; heard the splash of the turgid waters; saw himself, his lust for vengeance unsatisfied, peering downwards through the dim and murky gloom. It was not only a physical nightmare which seized him. His brain, too, was his accuser. He saw with a hideous clarity that even the excuse of motive was denied him. It was a sense of personal loss which had driven him out on to that canal path, a murderer at heart. It was something of which he had been robbed, an acute and burning desire for vengeance, personal, entirely egotistical. It was not the wrong to the woman which he resented, had there been any wrong. It was the agony of his own personal misery. He rose from his bed and stamped up and down his little chamber in a fear which was almost hysterical. He threw wide open the windows, heedless of a driving snowstorm. The subdued murmur of the city, with its paling lights, brought him no relief. He longed frantically for some one who knew the truth, for Elizabeth before any one, with her soft, cool touch, her gentle, protective sympathy. He was a fool to think he could live alone like this, with such a burden to bear! Perhaps it would not be for long. The risks were many. At any moment he might hear the lift stop, steps across the corridor, the ring at his bell, the plainly-clad, businesslike man outside, with his formal questions, his grim civility. He fumbled about in his little dressing-case until he came to a small box containing several white pills. He gripped them in his hand and looked around, listening. No, it was fancy! There was still no sound in the building. When at last he went back to bed, however, the little box was tightly clenched in his hands.