CHAPTER THIRTEEN TRAPPINGS OF TINSEL

UNDER the shaded light on his table, in his private sitting room in the Bayne-Miloy Hotel, John Bruce had been writing steadily for half an hour—but the sheets of paper over which his pen had traveled freely and swiftly were virgin white. He paused now, remained a moment in thought, and then added a line to the last sheet. No mark was left, but from the movement of the pen this appeared to be a signature.

He gathered the sheets together, folded them neatly, and slipped them into an envelope. He replaced the cap on the fountain pen he had been using, placed the pen in his vest pocket, and from another pocket took out another pen that was apparently identical with the first. With this second pen, in black ink, he addressed the envelope to one Gilbert Larmon in San Francisco. He sealed the envelope, stamped it, put it in his pocket, returned the second fountain pen to his vest pocket, lighted a cigarette leaned back in his chair, and frowned at the ascending spirals of smoke from the cigarette's tip.

The report which he had just written to Larmon, explaining his inaction during the past weeks, had been an effort—not physical, but mental. He had somehow, curiously, felt no personal regret for the enforced absence from his “work,” and he now felt no enthusiasm at the prospect of resuming it. He had had no right to tinge or color his letter to Larmon with these views; nor had he intended to do so. Perhaps he had not; perhaps he had. He did not know. The ink originated by the old Samoan Islander had its disadvantages as well as its advantages. He could not now read the letter over once it was written!

He flicked the ash irritably from his cigarette. He had been back here in the hotel now for two days and that feeling had been constantly growing upon him. Why? He did not know except that the cause seemed to insist on associating itself with his recent illness, his life in the one-time pawn-shop of Paul Veniza. But, logically, that did not hold water. Why should it? He had met a pawnbroker who roamed the streets at night in a fantastic motor car, driven by a drunkard; and he had fallen in love with a girl who was glad she was going to marry a dope-eating criminal. Good God, it was a spectacle to make——

John Bruce's fist crashed suddenly down on the desk beside him, and he rose from his chair and stood there staring unseeingly before him. That was not fair! What was uppermost now was the recrudescence of the bitterness that had possessed him two nights ago when he had returned from Paul Veniza's to the hotel here. Nor was it any more true than it was fair! What of the days and nights of nursing, of care, of the ungrudging and kindly hospitality they had given to an utter stranger? Yes, he knew! Only—only she had said she was glad!

He began to pace the room. He had left Veniza's in bitterness. He had not seen Claire. It was a strange sort of love he boasted, little of unselfishness in it, much of impatience, and still more of intolerance! That it was a hopeless love in so far as he was concerned did not place him before himself in any better light. If he cared for her, if there was any depth of feeling in this love he claimed to have, then at least her happiness, her welfare and her future could not be extraneous and indifferent considerations to him. And on the spur of the moment, piqued, in spite of Paul Veniza's protestations, he had left that night without seeing Claire again!

He had been ashamed of himself. Yesterday, he had telephoned Claire. He had begged her forgiveness. He had not meant to say more—but he had! Something in her voice had—no, not invited; he could not say that—but had brought the passion, pleading almost, back into his own. It had seemed to him that she was in tears at the other end of the wire; at least, bravely as she had evidently tried to do so, she had been unable to keep her voice under control. But she had evaded an answer. There had been nothing to forgive, she had said. He had told her that he must see her, that he would see her again. And then almost hysterically, over and over again, she had begged him to attempt nothing of the sort, but instead to leave New York because she insisted that it was not safe for him to stay even in the city.

John Bruce hurled the butt of his cigarette in the direction of the cuspidor, and clenched his fist. Crang! Safe from Crang! He laughed aloud harshly. He asked nothing better than to meet Crang again. He would not be so weak the next time! And the sooner the better!

He gnawed at his under lip, as he continued to pace the room. To-day, he had telephoned Claire again—but he had not spoken to her this time. He had not been surprised at the news he had received, for he remembered that Hawkins had once told him that the old pawnbroker was in reality far from well. Some one, he did not know who, some neighbor probably, had answered the phone. Paul Veniza had been taken ill. Claire had been up with him all the previous night, and was then resting.

John Bruce paused abruptly before the desk at which he had been writing, and looked at his watch. It was a little after ten o'clock. He was going back to “work” again to-night. He smiled suddenly, and a little quizzically, as he caught sight of himself in a mirror. What would they say—the white-haired negro butler, and the exquisite Monsieur Henri de Lavergne, for instance—when the millionaire plunger, usually so immaculate in evening clothes, presented himself at their door in a suit of business tweeds?

He shrugged his shoulders. Down at Ratti's that night his apparel—it was a matter of viewpoint—had been a source of eminent displeasure, and as such had been very effectively disposed of. He had had no opportunity to be measured for new clothes.

The smile faded, and he stood staring at the desk. The millionaire plunger! It seemed to jar somehow on his sensibilities. Work! That was a queer way, too, to designate it. He was going to take up his work again to-night, pick up the threads of his life again where he had dropped them. A bit ragged those threads, weren't they? Frayed, as it were!

What the devil was the matter with him, anyway?

There was money in it, a princely existence. What more could any one ask? What did Claire, his love for a girl who was glad to marry some one else infinitely worse than he was, have to do with it? Ah, she did have something to do with it, then! Nonsense! It was absurd!

He took a key abruptly from his pocket, and unlocked one of the drawers of the desk. From the drawer he took out a large roll of bills. The hotel management had sent to the bank and cashed a check for him that afternoon. He had not forgotten that he would need money, and plenty of it, at the tables this evening. Well, he was quite ready to go now, and it was time; it would be halfpast ten before he got there, and——

“The devil!” said John Bruce savagely—and suddenly tossed the money back into the drawer, and locked the drawer. “If I don't feel like it to-night, why should I? I guess I'll just drop around for a little convalescent visit, and let it go at that.”

John Bruce put on a light overcoat, and left the room. In the lobby downstairs he posted his letter to Gilbert Larmon. He stepped out on the street, and from the rank in front of the hotel secured a taxi. Twenty minutes later he entered Gilbert Larmon's New York gambling hell.

Here he received a sort of rhapsodical welcome from the exquisite Monsieur Henri de Lavergne, which embraced poignant regret at the accident that had befallen him, and unspeakable joy at his so-splendid recovery. It was a delight so great to shake the hand of Mr. Bruce again that Monsieur Henri de Lavergne complained bitterly at the poverty of language which prevented an adequate expression of his true and sincere feelings. Also, Monsieur Henri de Lavergne, if he were not trespassing, would be flattered indeed with Mr. Bruce's confidence, if Mr. Bruce should see fit to honor him with an account of how the accident had happened. He would be desolated if in any way it could be attributable to any suggestion that he, Monsieur de Lavergne, on behalf of the house which he had the honor to represent as manager, had made to Mr. Bruce which might have induced——

“Not at all!” John Bruce assured him heartily. He smiled at Monsieur de Lavergne. The other knew nothing of Claire's presence in the car that night, and for Claire's sake it was necessary to set the man's mind so completely at rest that the subject would lack further interest. The only way to accomplish that was to appear whole-heartedly frank. John Bruce became egregiously frank. “It was just my own damned curiosity,” he said with a wry smile. “I got out of that ingenious contraption at the corner after going around the block, and, well, my curiosity, as I said, got the better of me. I followed the thing, and found out where Mr. Veniza lived. I started on my way back, but I didn't get very far. I got into trouble with a rather tough crowd just around the corner, who didn't like my shirt front, I believe they said. The fight ended by my being backed into a wine shop where I was stabbed, but from which I managed to escape into the lane. I was about all in, and the only chance I could see was a lighted window on the other side of a low fence. I crawled in the window, and flopped on the floor. It proved to be Mr. Veniza's house.”

“Pour l'amour du dieu!” exclaimed Monsieur Henri de Lavergne breathlessly.

“And which also accounts,” said John Bruce pleasantly, “for the apology I must offer you for my appearance this evening in these clothes. The mob in that respect was quite successful.”

“But that you are back!” Monsieur de Lavergne's hands were raised in protest. “That is alone what matters. Monsieur Bruce knows that in any attire it is the same here for monsieur as though he were at home.”

“Thank you!” said John Bruce cordially. “I have only dropped in through the urge of old habits, I guess. I'm hardly on my feet yet, and I thought I'd just watch the play for a little while to-night.”

“And that, too,” said Monsieur Henri de Lavergne with a bow, as John Bruce moved toward the staircase, “is entirely as monsieur desires.”

John Bruce mounted the stairs, and began a stroll through the roulette and card rooms. The croupiers and dealers nodded to him genially; those of the “guests” Whom he knew did likewise. He was treated with marked courtesy and consideration by every attendant in the establishment. Everything was exactly as it had been on his previous visits. There were the soft mellow lights; the siren pur of the roulette wheel, the musical click of the ball as it spun around on its little fateful orbit; the low, quiet voices of the croupiers and dealers; the well-dressed players grouped around the tables, the hilarious and the grim, the devil-may-care laugh from one, the thin smile from another. It was exactly the same, all exactly the same, even to the table in the supper room, free to all though laden with every wine and delicacy that money could procure; but somehow, even at the end of half an hour, where he was wont to be engrossed till daylight, John Bruce became excessively bored.

Perhaps it was because he was simply an on-looker, and not playing himself. He had drawn close to a group around a faro bank. The play was grim earnest and for high stakes. No, it wasn't that! He did not want to play. Somehow, rather, he knew a slight sense both of contempt and disgust at the eager clutch and grasp of hands, the hoarse, short laugh of victory, the snarl of defeat, the trembling fingers of the more timorous who staked with Chance and demanded that the god be charitable in its omnipotence and toss them crumbs!

Well, what was he caviling about? It was the life he had chosen. It was his life work. Wasn't he pleased with it? He had certainly liked it well enough in the old days to squander upon it the fair-sized fortune his father had left him. He decidedly had not gone into that infernal compact with Larmon blindfolded. Perhaps it was because in those days he played when he wanted to; and in these, and hereafter, he would play because he had to. Perhaps it was only that, to-night, there was upon him the feeling, which was natural enough, and which was immeasurably human too, that it was irksome to be a slave, to be fettered and shackled and bound to anything, even to what one, with one's freedom his own, was ordinarily out of choice most prone to do and delight in. Well, maybe! But that was not entirely a satisfactory or conclusive solution either.

He looked around him. There seemed to be something hollow to-night in these trappings of tinsel; and something not only hollow, but sardonic in his connection with them—that he should act as a monitor over the honesty of those who in turn acted as the agents of Larmon in an already illicit traffic.

“Oh, hell!” said John Bruce suddenly.

The dealer looked up from the table, surprise mingling with polite disapproval. Several of the players screwed around their heads.

“That's what I say!” snarled one of the latter with an added oath, as a large stack of chips was swept away from him.

Some one touched John Bruce on the elbow. He turned around. It was one of the attendants.

“You are being asked for downstairs, Mr. Bruce,” the man informed him.

John Bruce followed the attendant. In the hall below the white-haired negro doorkeeper came toward him.

“I done let him in, Mistuh Bruce, suh,” the old darky explained a little anxiously, “'cause he done say, Mistuh Bruce, that it was a case of most particular illness, suh, and——”

John Bruce did not wait for more. It was Veniza probably—a turn for the worse. He nodded, and passed hurriedly along the hall to where, near the door, a poorly dressed man, hat in hand and apparently somewhat ill at ease in his luxurious surroundings, stood waiting.

“I am Mr. Bruce,” he said quickly. “Some one is critically ill, you say? Is it Mr. Veniza?”

“No, sir,” the man answered. “I don't know anything about Mr. Veniza. It's Hawkins.”

“Hawkins!” ejaculated John Bruce.

“Yes, sir,” said the man. He shuffled his feet. “I—I guess you know, sir.”

John Bruce for a moment made no comment. Hawkins! Yes, he knew! Hawkins had even renounced his pledge, hadn't he? Not, perhaps, that that would have made any difference!

“Bad?” he asked tersely.

“I'm afraid so, sir,” the man replied. “I've seen a good bit of Hawkins off and on in the last two years, sir, because I room in the same house; but I've never seen him like this. He's been out of his head and clawing the air, sir, if you know what I mean. He's over that now, but that weak he had me scared once, sir, that he'd gone.”

“What does the doctor say?” John Bruce bit off his words.

The man shook his head.

“He wouldn't have one, sir. It's you he wants. You'll understand, sir, that he's been alone. I don't know how long ago he started on this spree. It was only by luck that I walked into his room to-night. I was for getting a doctor at once, of course, but he wouldn't have it; he wanted you. At times, sir, he was crying like a baby, only he hadn't the strength of one left. Knowing I could run her, me being a motortruck driver, he told me to take that car he drives and go to the hotel for you, and if you weren't there to try here—which I've done, sir, as you see, and I hope you'll come back with me. I don't know what to do, though I'm for picking up a doctor on the way back whether he wants one or not.”

John Bruce turned abruptly, secured his coat and hat, motioned the man to lead the way, and followed the other out of the house and down the steps to the sidewalk.

The traveling pawn-shop was at the curb. The man opened the door, and John Bruce stepped inside—and was instantly flung violently down upon a seat. The door closed. The car started forward. And in a sudden glare of light John Bruce stared into the muzzle of a revolver, and, behind the revolver, into a bruised and battered face, which was the face of Doctor Crang.