The Cinema Murder Part 12

Philip opened the door, a civility which seemed to somewhat embarra.s.s 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 a.s.sured 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 maitre 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 a.s.sured 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."