CHAPTER I

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:

DOUGLAS ROMILLY, WEALTHY ENGLISH BOOT MANUFACTURER, DISAPPEARS FROM THE WALDORF ASTORIA HOTEL. WALKS OUT OF HIS ROOM WITHIN AN HOUR OF LANDING AND HAS NOT BEEN HEARD OF SINCE. DOWN TOWN HAUNTS SEARCHED. FOUL PLAY FEARED. SUPERINTENDENT SHIPMAN DECLARES HIMSELF BAFFLED.

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:

NO NEWS OF DOUGLAS ROMILLY.

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.

CHAPTER II

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.

CHAPTER III

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.

In the morning he went through his usual programme. He arose soon after eight, lighted his little spirit lamp, made his coffee, cut some bread and butter, and breakfasted. Then he lit a cigarette and sat down at his desk. His imagination, however, seemed to have burnt itself out in the night. Ideas and phrases were denied to him. He was thankful, about eleven o'clock, to hear a ring at the bell and find Martha Grimes outside with a little parcel under her arm. She was wearing the same shabby black dress and her fingers were stained with copying ink. Her almost too luxuriant hair was ill-arranged and untidy. Even her eyes seemed to have lost their lustre.

"I've finished," she announced, handing him the parcel. "Better look and see whether it's all right. I can't do it up properly till I've had the whole."

He cut the string and looked at a few of the sheets. The typing was perfect. He began to express his approval but she interrupted him.

"It's better stuff than I expected," she declared grudgingly. "I thought you were only one of these miserable amateurs. Where did you learn to write like that?"

Somehow, her praise was like a tonic.

"Do you like it?" he asked eagerly.

"Oh! my likes or dislikes don't matter," she replied. "It's good stuff. You'll find the account in there. If you'd like to pay me, I'd like to have the money."

He glanced at the neat little bill and took out his pocketbook.

"Sit down for a minute," he begged. "I'm stuck this morning—can't write a line. Take my easy-chair and smoke a cigarette—I have nothing else to offer you."

For a moment she seemed about to refuse. Then she flung herself into his easy-chair, took a cigarette, and, holding it between her lips, almost scarlet against the pallor of her cheeks, stretched upwards towards the match which he was holding.

"Stella and her boy were over to see me last night," she announced, a little abruptly.

"The young lady with the ermines," he murmured.

"And her boy, Felix Martin. It was through him they came—I could see that all right. He was trying all the time to pump me about you."

"About me?"

"Oh! you needn't trouble to look surprised," she remarked. "I guess you remember the bee he had in his bonnet that night."

"Mistook me for some one, didn't he?" Philip murmured.

She nodded.

"Kind of queer you don't read our newspapers! It was a guy named Romilly—Douglas Romilly—who disappeared from the Waldorf Hotel. Strange thing about it," she went on, "is that I saw photographs of him in the newspapers, and I can't recognise even a likeness."

"This Mr. Felix Martin doesn't agree with you, apparently," Philip observed.

"He don't go by the photographs," Martha Grimes explained. "He believes that he crossed from Liverpool with this Mr. Douglas Romilly, and that you," she continued, crossing her legs and smoothing down her skirt to hide her shabby shoes, "are so much like him that he came down last night to see if there was anything else he could find out from me before he paid a visit to police headquarters."

There was a moment's silence. Philip was apparently groping for a match, and the girl was keeping her head studiously turned away from him.

"What business is it of his?"

"There was a reward offered. Don't know as that would make much difference to Felix Martin, though. According to Stella's account, he is pretty well a millionaire already."

"It would be more useful to you, wouldn't it?" Philip remarked.

"Five hundred dollars!" Martha sighed. "Don't seem to me just now that there's much in the world you couldn't buy with five hundred dollars."

"Well, what did you tell Mr. Felix Martin?"

"Oh, I lied, sure! He'd found out the date you came into your rooms here—the day this man Romilly disappeared—but I told him that I'd known you and done work for you before then—long enough before the Elletania ever reached New York. That kind of stumped him."

"Why did you do that?" Philip demanded.

"Dunno," the girl replied, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Just a fancy.
I guessed you wouldn't want him poking around."

"But supposing I had been Douglas Romilly, you might at least have divided the reward," he reminded her.

"There's money and money," Martha declared. "We spoke of that the other day. Stella's got money—now. Well, she's welcome. My time will come, I suppose, but if I can't have clean money, I haven't made up my mind yet whether I wouldn't rather try the Hudson on a foggy morning."

"Well, I am not Douglas Romilly, anyway," Philip announced.

She looked up at him almost for the first time since her entrance.

"I kind of thought you were," she admitted. "I might have saved my lies, then."

He shook his head.

"You have probably saved me from more than you know of," he replied. "I am not Douglas Romilly, but—"

"You're not Merton Ware, either," she interrupted.

"Quite right," he agreed. "I started life as Philip Merton Ware the day I took these rooms, and if the time should come," he went on, "that any one seriously set about the task of finding out exactly who I was before I was Merton Ware, you and I might as well take that little journey—was it to the Hudson, you said, on a foggy morning?—together."

They sat in complete silence for several moments, Then she threw the end of her cigarette into the fire.

"Well, I'm glad I didn't lie for nothing," she declared. "I didn't quite tumble to the Douglas Romilly stunt, though. They say he has left his business bankrupt in England and brought a fortune out here. You don't look as though you were overdone with it."

"I certainly haven't the fortune that Douglas Romilly is supposed to have got away with," he said quietly. "I have enough money for my present needs, though—enough, by-the-by, to pay you for this typing," he added, counting out the money upon the table.

"Any more stuff ready?"

"With luck there'll be some this afternoon," he promised her. "I had a bad night last night, but I think I'll be able to work later in the day."

She looked at him curiously, at his face, absolutely devoid of colour, his eyes, restless and overbright, his long, twitching fingers.

"Bad conscience or drugs?" she asked.

"Bad conscience," he acknowledged. "I've been where you have been—Miss
Grimes. I looked over the edge and I jumped. I'd stay where you are, if
I were you."

"Maybe I shall, maybe I shan't," she replied doggedly. "Stella wants to bring a boy around to see me. 'You bring him,' I said. 'I'll talk to him.' Then she got a little confused. Stella's kind, in her way. She came back after Mr. Martin had gone down the passage. 'See here, kid,' she said, 'you know as well as I do I can't bring any one round to see you while you are sitting around in those rags. Let me lend you—' Well, I stopped her short at that. 'My own plumes or none at all,' I told her, 'and I'd just as soon he didn't come, anyway.'"

"You're a queer girl," Philip exclaimed. "Where's your father to-day?"

"Usual place," she answered,—"in bed. He never gets up till five."

"Let me order lunch up here for both of us, from the restaurant," he suggested.

She shook her head.

"No, thanks!"

"Why not?" he persisted.

"I'm going round to the office to see if I can get any extra work."

"But you've got to lunch some time," he persisted.

She laughed a little hardly.

"Have I? We girls haven't got to eat like you men. I'll call up towards the evening and see if you've anything ready for me."

She was gone before he could stop her. He turned back to his desk and seated himself. The sight of his last finished sentence presented itself suddenly in a new light. There was a suggestiveness about it which was almost poignant. He took up his pen and began to write rapidly.

CHAPTER IV

It was a few minutes after six that evening when Philip was conscious of a knock at his door. He swung around in his chair, blinking a little.

"Come in!"

Martha Grimes entered. She was in outdoor apparel, that is to say she wore her hat and a long mackintosh. She remained standing upon the threshold.

"Just looked up to see if you've got any more work ready," she explained.

He sprang to his feet and stood there, for a moment, unsteadily.

"Come in and shut the door," he ordered. "Look! Look!" he added, pointing to his table. "Thirty-three sheets! I've been working all the time. I've been living, I tell you, living God knows where!—not in this accursed little world. Here, let's pick up the sheets. There's enough work for you."

She looked at him curiously.

"Have you been in that chair ever since?" she asked.

"Ever since," he assented enthusiastically.

"Any lunch?"

"Not a scrap. Never thought about it."

"You'll make yourself sick, that's what you'll do," she declared. "Go out and get something at once."

"Never even thought about lunch," he repeated, half to himself. "Where have you been?"

"Some luck," she replied. "First place I dropped in at. Found there was a girl gone home for the day, fainted. Lots of work to do, so they just stuck me down in her chair. Three dollars they gave me. The girl's coming back to-morrow, though, worse luck."

"When did you have your lunch?"

"Haven't had any. I'm going to make myself a cup of tea now."

He reached for his hat.

"Not on your life" he exclaimed. "Come along, Miss Martha Grimes. I have written lines—you just wait till you type them! I tell you it's what I have had at the back of my head for months. It's there now on paper—living, flaring words. Come along."

"Where to?"

"We are going to eat," he insisted. "I am faint, and so are you. We are going to that same place, and we'll have lunch and dinner in one."

"Nothing doing," she snapped. "You'll see some more people who recognise you."

He waved his hand contemptuously.

"Who cares! If you don't come along with me, I'll go up town to the
Waldorf or the Ritz Carlton. I'll waste my money and advertise myself.
Come along—that same little quiet corner. I don't suppose your friends
will be there again."

"Stella won't," she admitted doubtfully. "She's going to Sherry's. I'd just as soon be out," she went on ruminatingly. "Shouldn't be surprised if she didn't bring that guy in, after all."

He had already rung the bell of the lift.

"Look at me!" she exclaimed ironically. "Nice sort of an object I am to take out! Got a raincoat on—though it's dry enough—because my coat's gone at the seams."

"If you don't stop talking like that," he declared, "I'll march into one of those great stores and order everything a woman wants to wear. Look at me. Did you ever see such clothes!"

"A man's different," she protested. "Besides, you've got a way with you of looking as though you could wear better clothes if you wanted to—something superior. I don't like it. I should like you better if you were common."

"You're going to like me better," he assured her, "because we are going to have a cocktail together within the next three minutes. Look at you—pale as you can stick. I bet you haven't had a mouthful of food all day. Neither have I, except a slice of bread and butter with my tea this morning. We're a nice sort of couple to talk about clothes. What we want is food."

She swayed for a moment and pretended that she tripped. He caught her arm and steadied her. She jerked it from him.

"Have your own way," she yielded.

They reached the corner of the street, plunged into the surging crowds of Broadway, passed into the huge restaurant, were once more pounced upon by a businesslike but slightly patronizing maître d'hôtel, and escorted to a remote table in a sort of annex of the room. Philip pushed the menu away.

"Two cocktails—the quickest you ever mixed in your life," he ordered.
"Quicker than that, mind."

The man was back again almost at once with two frosted glasses upon a tray. They laughed together almost like children as they set them down empty.

"I know what I want, and you, too, by the look of you," he continued—"a beefsteak, with some more of that green corn you gave me the other day, and fried potatoes, and Burgundy. We'll have some oysters first while we wait."

She sighed.

"I don't mean to come here with you again," she said, a little impatiently. "I don't know why I give in to you. You're not strong, you know. You are a weak man. Women will always look after you; they'll always help you in trouble—I suppose they'll always care for you. Can't think why I do what you want me to. Guess I was near starving."

He laughed.

"You don't know much about me yet," he reminded her.

"You don't know much about yourself," she retorted glibly. "Why, according to your own confession, you only started life a few weeks ago. I fancy what went before didn't count for much. You've been fretted and tied up somewhere. You haven't had the chance of getting big like so many of our American men. What are you going to do with this play of yours?"

"Miss Elizabeth Dalstan has promised to produce it," he told her.

She looked at him in some surprise.

"Elizabeth Dalstan?" she repeated. "Why, she's one of our best actresses."

"I understood so," he replied. "She has heard the story—in fact I wrote out one of the scenes with her. She is going to produce it as soon as it's finished."

"Well, all you poor idiots who write things have some fine tale to tell their typewriter," she remarked. "You seem as though you mean it, though. Where did you meet Elizabeth Dalstan?"

"I came over with her on the Elletania," he answered thoughtlessly.

She gave a little start. Then she turned upon him almost in anger.

"Well, of all the simpletons!" she exclaimed. "So that's the way you give yourself away, is it? Just here from Jamaica, eh! Nothing to do with Douglas Romilly! Never heard of the Elletania, did you! I'd like to see you on the grid at police headquarters for five minutes, with one of our men asking you a few friendly questions! You'd look well, you would! You ought to go about with a nurse!"

Philip had all the appearance of a guilty child.

"You see," he explained penitently, "I am new to this sort of thing.
However, you know now."

"Still ready to swear that you're not Douglas Romilly, I suppose?"

"On my honour I am not," he replied.

"Kind of funny that you should have been on the steamer, after all," she jeered.

"Perhaps so, but I am not Douglas Romilly," he persisted.

She was silent for a moment, then she shrugged her shoulders.

"What do I care who your are?" she said. "Here, help me off with this raincoat, please. It's warm in here, thank goodness!"

He looked at her as she sat by his side in her plain black dress, and was impressed for the first time with a certain unsuspected grace of outline, which made him for the moment oblivious of the shabbiness of her gown.

"You have rather a nice figure," he told her with a sudden impulse of ingenuousness.

She turned upon him almost furiously. Something in his expression, however, seemed to disarm her. She closed her lips again.

"You are nothing but a child!" she declared. "You don't mean anything.
I'd be a fool to be angry with you."

The waiter brought their steak. Philip was conscious of something in his companion's eyes which almost horrified him. It was just that gleam of hungry desire which has starvation for its background.

"Don't let's talk," he pleaded. "There isn't any conversation in the world as good as this."

The waiter served them and withdrew, casting a curious glance behind. They were, from his point of view, a strange couple, for, cosmopolitan though the restaurant was, money was plentiful in the neighbourhood, and clients as shabby as these two seldom presented themselves. He pointed them out to a maître d'hôtel, who in his turn whispered a few words concerning them to a dark, lantern-jawed man, with keen eyes and a hard mouth, who was dining by himself. The latter glanced at them and nodded.

"Thank you, Charles," he said, "I've had my eye on them. The girl's a pauper, daughter of that old fool Grimes, the actor. Does a little typewriting—precious little, I should think, from the look of her. The man's interesting. Don't talk about them. Understand?"

The maître d'hôtel bowed.

"I understand, Inspector. Not much any one can tell you, sir."

"Pays his bill in American money, I suppose?" the diner asked.

"I'll ascertain for you, Mr. Dane," Charles replied. "I believe he is an
Englishman."

"Name of Merton Ware," the inspector agreed, nodding, "just arrived from
Jamaica. Writes some sort of stuff which the girl with him typewrites.
That's his story. He's probably as harmless as a baby."

Charles bowed and moved away. His smile was inscrutable.

CHAPTER V

New York became a changed city to Philip. Its roar and its turmoil, its babel of tongues speaking to him always in some alien language, were suddenly hushed! He was no longer conscious of the hard unconcern of a million faces, of the crude buildings in the streets, the cutting winds, the curious, depressing sense of being on a desert island, the hermit clutching at the sleeves of imaginary multitudes. A few minutes' journey in a cable car which seemed to crawl, a few minutes' swift walking along the broad thoroughfare of Fifth Avenue, where his feet seemed to fall upon the air and the passersby seemed to smile upon him like real human beings, and he was in her room. It was only an hotel sitting room, after all, but eloquent of her, a sitting room filled with great bowls of roses, with comfortable easy-chairs, furniture of rose-coloured satin, white walls, and an English fire upon the grate. Elizabeth was in New York, and the world moved differently.

She came out to him from an inner room almost at once. His eyes swept over her feverishly. He almost held his breath. Then he gave a great sigh of satisfaction. She came with her hands outstretched, a welcoming smile upon her lips. She was just as he had expected to find her. There was nothing in her manner to indicate that they had not parted yesterday.

"Welcome to New York, my dramatist!" she exclaimed. "I am here, you see, to the day, almost to the hour."

He stood there, holding her hands. His eyes seemed to be devouring her.

"Go on talking to me," he begged. "Let me hear you speak. You can't think—you can't imagine how often in the middle of the night, I have waked up and thought of you, and the cold shivers have come because, after all, I fancied that you must be a dream, that you didn't really exist, that that voyage had never existed. Go on talking."

"You foolish person!" she laughed, patting his hands affectionately. "But then, of course, you are a little overwrought. I am very real, I can assure you. I have been in Chicago, playing, but there hasn't been a night when I haven't thought of the times when we used to talk together in the darkness, when you let me into your life, and I made up my mind to try and help you. Foolish person! Sit down in that great easy-chair and draw it up to the fire."

He sank into it with a little sigh of content. She threw herself on to the couch opposite to him. Her hands drooped down a little wearily on either side, her head was thrown back. Against the background of rose-silk cushions, her cheeks seemed unexpectedly pale.

"I am tired with travelling," she murmured, "and I hate Chicago, and I have worried about you. Day by day I have read the papers. Everything has gone well?"

"So far as I know," he answered. "I did exactly as we planned—or rather as you planned. The papers have been full of the disappearance of Douglas Romilly. You read how wonderfully it has all turned out? Fate has provided him with a real reason for disappearing. It seems that the business was bankrupt."

"You mustn't forget, though," she reminded him, "that that also supplies a considerable motive for tracking him down. He is supposed to have at least twenty thousand pounds with him."

"I have all the papers," he went on. "They prove that he knew the state the business was in. They prove that he really intended to disappear in New York. The money stands to the credit of Merton Ware—and another at a bank with which his firm apparently had had no connections, a small bank in Wall Street."

"So that," she remarked, "is where you get your pseudonym from?"

"It makes the identification so easy," he pointed out, "and no one knew of it except he. I could easily get a witness presently to prove that I am Merton Ware."

"You haven't drawn the money yet, then?"

"I haven't been near the bank," he replied. "I still have over a thousand dollars—money he had with him. Sometimes I think that if I could I'd like to leave that twenty thousand pounds where it is. I should like some day, if I could do so without suspicion, to let the creditors of the firm have it back again. What do you think?"

She nodded.

"I would rather you didn't touch it yourself," she agreed. "I think you'll find, too, that you'll be able to earn quite enough without wanting it. Nothing disturbing has happened to you at all, then?"

"Once I had a fright," he told her. "I was in a restaurant close to my hotel. I was there with a young woman who is typing the play for me."

She looked towards him incredulously.

"You were there with a typewriter?" she exclaimed.

"I suppose it seems queer," he admitted. "It didn't to me. She is a plain, shabby, half starved little thing, fighting her own battle bravely. She came to me for work—she lives in the flat below—and it seemed to me that she was just as hungry for a kind word as I was lonely, and I took her out with me. Twice I have taken her. Her name is Miss Grimes."

"I am not in the least sure that I approve," she said, "but go on."

"A friend of hers came into the restaurant, a girl in the chorus of a musical comedy here, and she had with her a young man. I recognised him at once. We didn't come across one another much, but he was on the steamer."

Elizabeth's face was full of concern.

"Go on."

"He asked me twice if I wasn't Mr. Romilly. I assured him that he was mistaken. I don't think I gave myself away. The next day he went to see the girl I was with, Martha Grimes."

"Well, what did she tell him?"

"She told him that she had been typing my work for over a month, that I had come from Jamaica, and that my name was Merton Ware."

Elizabeth gazed into the fire for several moments, and Philip watched her. It was a woman's face, grave and thoughtful, a little perturbed just then, as though by some unwelcome thought. Presently she looked back at him, looked into his eyes long and earnestly.

"My friend," she said, "you are like no one else on earth. Perhaps you are one of those horrible people who have what they call an unholy influence over my sex. You have known this girl for a matter of a few days, and she lies for you. And there's five hundred dollars reward. I suppose she knew about that?"

"Yes, she knew," he admitted. "She simply isn't that sort. I suppose I realised that, or I shouldn't have been kind to her."

"It's a puzzle," she went on. "I think there must be something in you of the weakling, you know, something that appeals to the mothering instinct in women. I know that my first feeling for you was that I wanted to help you. Tell me what you think of yourself, Mr. Philip Merton Ware? Are you a faithful person? Are you conscientious? Have you a heart, I wonder? How much of the man is there underneath that strong frame of yours? Are you going to take just the things that are given you in life, and make no return? For the moment, you see, I am forgetting that you are my friend and that I like you. I am thinking of you from the point of view of an actress—as a psychical problem. Philip, you idiot!" she broke off, suddenly stamping her foot, "don't sit there looking at me with your great eyes. Tell me you are glad I've come back. Tell me you feel something, for goodness' sake!"

He was on his knees before she could check him, his arms, his lips praying for her. She thrust him back.

"It was my fault," she declared, "but don't, please. Yes, of course you have feelings. I don't know why you tempted me to that little outburst."

"You'll tempt me to more than that," he cried passionately. "Do you think it's for your help that I've thought of you? Do you think it's because you're an angel to me, because you've comforted me in my darkest, most miserable hours that I've dreamed of you and craved for you? There's more than that in my thoughts, dear. It's because you are you, yourself, that I've longed for you through the aching hours of the night, that I've sat and written like a man beside himself just for the joy of thinking that the words I wrote would be spoken by you. Oh! if you want me to tell you what I feel—"

She suddenly leaned forward, took his head between her hands and kissed his forehead.

"Now get back, please, to your chair," she begged. "You've stilled the horrible, miserable little doubt that was tearing at my heartstrings. I just had it before, once or twice, and then—isn't it foolish!—your telling me about this little typewriter girl! I must go and see her. We must be kind to her."

He resumed his seat with a little sigh.

"She thought a great deal more of me and my work when I told her that you were probably going to act in my play."

Her expression changed. She was more serious, at the same time more eager.

"Ah! The play!" she exclaimed. "I can see that you have brought some of it."

He drew the roll of manuscript from his pocket.

"Shall I read it?" he suggested.

She almost snatched it away. "No! I can't wait for that. Give it to me, quickly."

She leaned forward so that the firelight fell upon the pages. Little strands of soft brown hair drooped over her face. In studying her, Philip almost forgot his own anxiety. He had known so few women, yet he had watched so many from afar off, endowed them with their natural qualities, built up their lives and tastes for them, and found them all so sadly wanting. To him, Elizabeth represented everything that was desirable in her sex, from the flowing lines of her beautiful body to the sympathy which seemed to be always shining out of her eyes. Notwithstanding her strength, she was so exquisitely and entirely feminine, a creature of silk and laces, free from any effort of provocativeness, yet subtly, almost clamorously human. He forgot, in those few moments, that she had become the arbitress of his material fate—that he was a humble author, watching the effect of his first attempts upon a mistress in her profession. He remembered only that she was the woman who was filling his life, stealing into every corner of it, permeating him with love, pointing him onwards towards a life indescribable, unrealisable….

She swung suddenly towards him. There was a certain amount of enthusiasm in her face but even more marked was her relief.

"Oh! I am so glad," she cried. "You know, I have had qualms. When you told me the story in your own words, picking your language so carefully, and building it all up before me, well, you know what I said. I gave you more than hope—I promised you success. And then, when I got away into the hard, stagey world of Chicago, and my manager talked business to me, and my last playwright preached of technique, I began to wonder whether, after all, you could bring your ideas together like this, whether you would have a sense of perspective—you know what I mean, don't you? And you have it, and the play is going to be wonderful, and I shall produce it. Why don't you look pleased, Mr. Author? You are going to be famous."

He smiled.

"I don't care about fame," he said. "And for the rest, I think I knew."

"Conceited!" she exclaimed.

"It wasn't that," he protested. "It was simply when I sat down in that little room, high up over the roofs and buildings of a strange city, shut myself in and told myself that it was for you—well, the thoughts came too easily. They tumbled over one another. And when I looked away from my work, I saw the people moving around me, and I knew that I had made my dreams real, and that's the great thing, isn't it?… Elizabeth!"

"Well?"

"I am lonely in that little room."

"You lonely, taking out typewriters to dine!" she mocked tenderly.

"It is lonely," he repeated, "and I am afraid of you here in all this luxury. I am so far away. I come from my attic to this, and I am afraid. Do you know why?"

She sat quite still for a moment. Dimly she felt the presage of a coming change in their relations. Up to now she had been the mistress, she had held him so easily in check with her practised skill, with an unfinished sentence, a look, a touch. And now the man was rising up in him, and she felt her powers weaken.

"Shall I change my abode?" she murmured.

"Ah! but you would be just as wonderful and as far away even if we changed places—if you sat in my attic and I took your place here. That isn't why I torture myself, why I am always asking myself if you are real, if the things we talk about are real, if the things we feel belong to ourselves, well up from our own hearts for one another or are just the secondary emotions of other people we catch up without knowing why. This is foolish, but you understand—you do understand. It is because you keep me so far away from yourself, when my fingers are burning for yours, when even to touch your face, to feel your cheek against mine, would banish every fear I have ever had. Elizabeth, you do understand! I have never kissed you, I have never held you for one moment in my arms—and I love you!"

He was leaning over her chair and she held him tightly by the shoulders. There was nothing left of that hidden fear in his dark eyes. They shone now with another light, and she began to tremble.

"I wanted to wait a little, Philip, but if you feel like that—well, I can't."

He took her silently into his arms. With the half closing of her eyes, the first touch of her responsive lips, himself dimly conscious of the change, he passed into the world where stronger men live.