“For a simple silly reason. I was afraid. I had taken up a task too big for me by far — taken it up bravely when I was out in the sunlight of Reuton. But when I saw Upper Asquewan Falls, and the dark came, and that dingy station swallowed me up, something gave way inside me and I felt I was going to fail. So — I cried. A woman’s way.”
“If I were only permitted to help—” Mr. Magee pleaded.
“No — I must go forward alone. I can trust no one, now. Perhaps things will change. I hope they will.”
“Listen,” said Mr. Magee. “I am telling you the truth. Perhaps you read a novel called The Lost Limousine.” He was resolved to claim its authorship, tell her of his real purpose in coming to Baldpate, and urge her to confide in him regarding the odd happenings at the inn.
“Yes,” said the girl before he could continue. “I did read it. And it hurt me. It was so terribly insincere. The man had talent who wrote it, but he seemed to say: ‘It’s all a great big joke. I don’t believe in these people myself. I’ve just created them to make them dance for you. Don’t be fooled — it’s only a novel.” I don’t like that sort of thing. I want a writer really to mean all he says from the bottom of his heart.”
Mr. Magee bit his lip. His determination to claim the authorship of The Lost Limousine was quite gone.
“I want him to make me feel with his people,” the girl went on seriously. “Perhaps I can explain by telling you of something that happened to me once. It was while I was at college. There was a blind girl in my class and one night I went to call on her. I met her in the corridor of her dormitory. Somebody had just brought her back from an evening lecture, and left her there. She unlocked her door, and we went in. It was pitch dark in the room — the first thing I thought of was a light. But she — she just sat down and began to talk. She had forgot to light the gas.”
The girl paused, her eyes very wide, and it seemed to Mr. Magee that she shivered slightly.
“Can you imagine it?” she asked. “She chatted on — quite cheerfully as I remember it. And I–I stumbled round and fell into a chair, cold and trembly and sick with the awful horror of blindness, for the first time in my life. I thought I had imagined before what it was to be blind — just by shutting my eyes for a second. But as I sat there in the blackness, and listened to that girl chatter, and realized that it had never occurred to her to light a lamp — then for the first time — I knew — I knew.”
Again she stopped, and Mr. Magee, looking at her, felt what he had never experienced before — a thrill at a woman’s near presence.
“That’s what I ask of a writer,” she said, “that he make me feel for his people as I felt for that girl that night. Am I asking too much? It need not be for one who is enmeshed in tragedy — it may be for one whose heart is as glad as a May morning. But he must make me feel. And he can’t do that if he doesn’t feel himself, can he?”
William Hallowell Magee actually hung his head.
“He can’t,” he confessed softly. “You’re quite right. I like you immensely — more than I can say. And even if you feel you can’t trust me, I want you to know that I’m on your side in whatever happens at Baldpate Inn. You have only to ask, and I am your ally.”
“Thank you,” she answered. “I may be very glad to ask. I shall remember.” She rose and moved toward the stairs. “We had better disperse now. The rocking-chair fleet will get us if we don’t watch out.” Her small slipper was on the first step of the stair, when they heard a door slammed shut, and the sound of steps on the bare floor of the dining-room. Then a husky voice called “Bland”.
Mr. Magee felt his hand grasped by a much smaller one, and before he knew it he had been hurried to the shadows of the landing. “The fifth key,” whispered a scared little voice in his ear. And then he felt the faint brushing of finger-tips across his lips. A mad desire seized him to grasp those fingers and hold them on the lips they had scarcely touched. But the impulse was lost in the thrill of seeing the dining-room door thrown open and a great bulk of a man cross the floor of the office and stand beside Bland’s chair. At his side was a thin waif who had not unjustly been termed the mayor of Reuton’s shadow.
“Asleep,” bellowed the big man. “How’s this for a watch-dog, Lou?”
“Right on the job, ain’t he?” sneered the thin one.
Mr. Bland started suddenly from slumber, and looked up into the eyes of the newcomers.
“Hello, Cargan,” he said. “Hello, Lou. For the love of heaven, don’t shout so. The place is full of them.”
“Full of what?” asked the mayor.
“Of spotters, maybe — I don’t know what they are. There’s an old high-brow and a fresh young guy, and two women.”
“People,” gasped the mayor. “People — here?”
“Sure.”
“You’re asleep, Bland.”
“No I’m not, Cargan,” cried the haberdasher. “Look around for yourself. The inn’s overrun with them.”
Cargan leaned weakly against a chair.
“Well, what do you know about that,” he said. “And they kept telling me Baldpate Inn was the best place — say, this is one on Andy Rutter. Why didn’t you get it out and beat it?”
“How could I?” Mr. Bland asked. “I haven’t got the combination. The safe was left open for me. That was the agreement with Rutter.”
“You might have phoned us not to come,” remarked Lou, with an uneasy glance around.
Mr. Cargan hit the mantelpiece with his huge fist.
“By heaven, no,” he cried. “I’ll lift it from under their very noses. I’ve done it before — I can do it now. I don’t care who they are. They can’t touch me. They can’t touch Jim Cargan. I ain’t afraid.”
Mr. Magee, on the landing, whispered into his companion’s ear. “I think I’ll go down and greet our guests.” He felt her grasp his arm suddenly, as though in fear, but he shook off her hand and debonairly descended to the group below.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said suavely. “Welcome to Baldpate! Please don’t attempt to explain — we’re fed up on explanations now. You have the fifth key, of course. Welcome to our small but growing circle.”
The big man advanced threateningly. Mr. Magee saw that his face was very red, his neck very thick, but his mouth a cute little cupid’s bow that might well have adorned a dainty baby in the park.
“Who are you?” bellowed the mayor of Reuton in a tone meant to be cowering.
“I forget,” replied Mr. Magee easily. “Bland, who am I to-day? The cast-off lover of Arabella, the fleeing artist, or the thief of portraits from a New York millionaire’s home? Really, it doesn’t matter. We shift our stories from time to time. As the first of the Baldpate hermits, however, it is my duty to welcome you, which I hereby do.”
The mayor pointed dramatically to the stair.
“I give you fifteen minutes,” he roared, “to pack up and get out. I don’t want you here. Understand?”
To Cargan’s side came the slinking figure of Lou Max. His face was the withered yellow of an old lemon; his garb suggested shop-windows on dirty side streets; unpleasant eyes shifted behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. His attitude was that of the dog who crouches by its master.
“Clear out,” he snarled.
“By no means,” replied Magee, looking the mayor squarely in the eye. “I was here first. I’m here to stay. Put me out, will you? Well, perhaps, after a fight. But I’d be back in an hour, and with me whatever police Upper Asquewan Falls owns to.”
He saw that the opposing force wavered at this.
“I want no trouble, gentlemen,” he went on. “Believe me, I shall be happy to have your company to dinner. Your command that I withdraw is ill-timed, not to say ill-natured and impolite. Let us all forget it.”