The Danger Mark Part 94

Some spoke to him as they pa.s.sed out; he made them no answer. And at last he was alone.

Reaching for his empty gla.s.s, he miscalculated the distance between it and his quivering fingers; it fell and broke to pieces. When the waiter came he cursed him, flung a bill at him, got up, demanded his coat and hat, swore at the pallid, little, b.u.t.ton-covered page who brought it, and lurched out into the street.

A cab stood there; he entered it, fell heavily into a corner of the seat, bade the driver, "Keep going, d.a.m.n you!" and sat swaying, muttering, brooding on the wrongs that the world had done him.

Wrongs! Yes, by G.o.d! Every hand was against him, every tongue slandered him. Who was he that he should endure it any longer in patience! Had he not been patient? Had he not submitted to the insults of a fool of a doctor?--had he not stayed his hand from punis.h.i.+ng Dumont's red and distended face?--had he not silently accepted the insolent retorts of these Grub Street literati who turned on him and flouted the talent that lay dormant in him--dead, perhaps--but dead or dormant, it still matched theirs! And they knew it, d.a.m.n them!

Had he not stood enough from the rotten world?--from his own sister, who had flung his honour into his face with impunity!--from Dysart, whose maddening and continual ignoring of his letters demanding an explanation----

There seemed to come a sudden flash in his brain; he leaned from the window and shouted an address to the cabman. His hat had fallen beside him, but he did not notice its absence on his fevered head.

"I'll begin with _him_!" he repeated with a thick laugh; "I'll settle with him first. Now we're going to see! Now we'll find out about several matters--or I'll break his neck off!--or I'll twist it off--wring it off!"

And he beat on his knees with his fists, railing, raging, talking incoherently, laughing sometimes, sometimes listening, as though, suddenly, near him, a voice was mocking him.

He had a pocket full of bills, crushed up; some he gave to the cabman, some he dropped as he stuffed the others into his pockets, stumbled toward a bronze-and-gla.s.s grille, and rang. The cabman brought him his hat, put it on him, gathered up the dropped money, and drove off with his tongue in his cheek.

Quest rang again; the door opened; he gave his card to the servant, and stealthily followed him upstairs over the velvet carpet.

Dysart, in a velvet dressing-gown knotted in close about his waist, looked over the servant's shoulders and saw Quest standing there in the hall, leering at him.

For a moment n.o.body spoke; Dysart took the offered card mechanically, glanced at it, looked at Quest, and nodded dismissal to the servant.

When he and the other man stood alone, he said in a low, uncertain voice:

"Get out of here!"

But Quest pushed past him into the lighted room beyond, and Dysart followed, very pale.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I've asked you questions, too," retorted Quest. "Answer mine first."

"Will you get out of here?"

"Not until I take my answer with me."

"You're drunk!"

"I know it. Look out!"

Dysart moistened his bloodless lips.

"What do you want to know?" And, as Quest shouted a question at him: "Keep quiet! Speak lower, I tell you. My father is in the next room."

"What in h.e.l.l do I care for your father? Answer me or I'll choke it out of you! Answer me now, you dancing blackguard! I've got you; I want my answer, and you've got to give it to me!"

"If you don't lower your voice," said Dysart between his teeth, "I'll throw you out of that window!"

"Lower my voice? Why? Because the old fox might hear the young one yap!

What do I care for you or your doddering family----"

He went down with a sharp crash; Dysart struck him again as he rose; then, beside himself, rained blows on him, drove him from corner to corner, out of the room, into the hall, striking him in the face till the young fellow reeled and fell against the bath-room door. It gave; he stumbled into darkness; and after him sprang Dysart, teeth set--sprang into the darkness which split before him with a roar into a million splinters of fire.

He stood for a second swaying, reaching out to grasp at nothing in a patient, persistent, meaningless way; then he fell backward, striking a terrified servant, who shrank away and screamed as the light fell on her ap.r.o.n and cuffs all streaked with blood.

She screamed again as a young man's white and battered face appeared in the dark doorway before her.

"Is he hurt?" he asked. His dilated eyes were fixed upon the thing on the floor. "What are you howling for? Is he--dead?" whispered Quest.

Suddenly terror overwhelmed him.

"Get out of my way!" he yelled, hurling the shrieking maid aside, striking the frightened butler who tried to seize him on the stairs.

There was another manservant at the door, who stood his ground swinging a bronze statuette. Quest darted into the drawing-room, ran through the music-room and dining-room beyond, and slammed the door of the butler's pantry.

He stood there panting, glaring, his shoulder set against the door; then he saw a bolt, and shot it, and backed away, pistol swinging in his bleeding fist.

Servants were screaming somewhere in the house; doors slammed, a man was shouting through a telephone amid a confusion of voices that swelled continually until the four walls rang with the uproar. A little later a policeman ran through the bas.e.m.e.nt into the yard beyond; another pushed his way to the pantry door and struck it heavily with his night-stick, demanding admittance.

For a second he waited; then the reply came, abrupt, deafening; and he hurled himself at the bolted door, and it flew wide open.

But Quest remained uninterested. Nothing concerned him now, lying there on his back, his bruised young face toward the ceiling, and every earthly question answered for him as long as time shall last.

Up-stairs a very old and shrunken man sat s.h.i.+vering in bed, staring vacantly at some policemen and making feeble efforts to reach a wig hanging from a chair beside him--a very glossy, expensive wig, nicely curled where it was intended to fall above the ears.

"I don't know," he quavered, smirking at everybody with crackled, painted lips, "I know nothing whatever about this affair. You must ask my son Jack, gentlemen--my son Jack--te-he!--oh, yes, he knows; he can tell you a thing or two, I warrant you! Yes, gentlemen, he's like all the Dysarts--fit for a fight or a frolic!--te-he!--he's all Dysart, gentlemen--my son Jack. But he is a good son to me--yes, yes!--a good son, a good son! Tell him I said so--and--good-night."

"Nutty," whispered a policeman. "Come on out o' this boodwar and lave th' ould wan be."

And they left him smirking, smiling, twitching his faded lips, and making vague sounds, lying there asleep in his dotage.

And all night long he lay mumbling his gums and smiling, his sleep undisturbed by the stir and lights and tramp of feet around him.

And all night long in the next room lay his son, white as marble and very still.

Toward morning he spoke, asking for his father. But they had decided to probe for the bullet, and he closed his eyes wearily and spoke no more.

They found it. What Dysart found as the winter sun rose over Manhattan town, his Maker only knows, for his sunken eyes opened unterrified yet infinitely sad. But there was a vague smile on his lips after he lay there dead.

Nor did his slayer lie less serenely where bars of sunlight moved behind the lowered curtains, calm as a schoolboy sleeping peacefully after the eternity of a summer day where he had played too long and fiercely with a world too rough for him.

And so, at last, the indictments were dismissed against them both and their cases adjourned _sine die_.

CHAPTER XXIV