XIX
Blake did not look up as he heard the door open and the woman step intothe room. There was an echo of his old-time theatricalism in thatdissimulation of stolid indifference. But the old-time stage-setting, heknew, was no longer there. Instead of sitting behind an oak desk atHeadquarters, he was staring down at a beer-stained card-table in thedingy back room of a dingy downtown hotel.
He knew the woman had closed the door and crossed the room to the otherside of the card-table, but still he did not look up at her. The silencelengthened until it became acute, epochal, climactic.
"You sent for me?" his visitor finally said. And as Elsie Verrineruttered the words he was teased by a vague sense that the scene hadhappened before, that somewhere before in their lives it had beenduplicated, word by word and move by move.
"Sit down," he said with an effort at the gruffness of assured authority.But the young woman did not do as he commanded. She remained stillstanding, and still staring down at the face of the man in front of her.
So prolonged was this stare that Blake began to be embarrassinglyconscious of it, to fidget under it. When he looked up he did socircuitously, pretending to peer beyond the white face and the staringeyes of the young woman confronting him. Yet she ultimately coerced hisunsteady gaze, even against his own will. And as he had expected, he sawwritten on her face something akin to horror.
As he, in turn, stared back at her, and in her eyes saw firstincredulity, and then, what stung him more, open pity itself, it camehome to him that he must indeed have altered for the worse, that his faceand figure must have changed. For the first time it flashed over him: hewas only the wreck of the man he had once been. Yet at the core of thatwreck burned the old passion for power, the ineradicable appetite forauthority. He resented the fact that she should feel sorry for him. Heinwardly resolved to make her suffer for that pity, to enlighten her asto what life was still left in the battered old carcass which she couldso openly sorrow over.
"Well, I'm back," he announced in his guttural bass, as though to bridgea silence that was becoming abysmal.
"Yes, you're back!" echoed Elsie Verriner. She spoke absently, as thoughher mind were preoccupied with a problem that seemed inexplicable.
"And a little the worse for wear," he pursued, with his mirthless croakof a laugh. Then he flashed up at her a quick look of resentment, a lookwhich he found himself unable to repress. "While you're all dolled up,"he said with a snort, as though bent on wounding her, "dolled up like alobster palace floater!"
It hurt him more than ever to see that he could not even dethrone thatfixed look of pity from her face, that even his abuse could not thrustaside her composure.
"I'm not a lobster palace floater," she quietly replied. "And you knowit."
"Then what are you?" he demanded.
"I'm a confidential agent of the Treasury Department," was herquiet-toned answer.
"Oho!" cried Blake. "So that's why we've grown so high and mighty!"
The woman sank into the chair beside which she had been standing. Sheseemed impervious to his mockery.
"What do you want me for?" she asked, and the quick directness of herquestion implied not so much that time was being wasted on side issues asthat he was cruelly and unnecessarily demeaning himself in her eyes.
It was then that Blake swung about, as though he, too, were anxious tosweep aside the trivialities that stood between him and his end, asthough he, too, were conscious of the ignominy of his own position.
"You know where I've been and what I've been doing!" he suddenly criedout.
"I'm not positive that I do," was the woman's guarded answer.
"That's a lie!" thundered Blake. "You know as well as I do!"
"What have you been doing?" asked the woman, almost indulgently.
"I've been trailing Binhart, and you know it! And what's more, you knowwhere Binhart is, now, at this moment!"
"What was it you wanted me for?" reiterated the white-faced woman,without looking at him.
Her evasions did more than anger Blake; they maddened him. For years nowhe had been compelled to face her obliquities, to puzzle over the enigmaof her ultimate character, and he was tired of it all. He made no effortto hold his feelings in check. Even into his voice crept that grossnesswhich before had seemed something of the body alone.
"I want to know where Binhart is!" he cried, leaning forward so that hishead projected pugnaciously from his shoulders like the head of afighting-cock.
"Then you have only wasted time in sending for me," was the woman'sobdurate answer. Yet beneath her obduracy was some vague note ofcommiseration which he could not understand.
"I want that man, and I'm going to get him," was Blake's impassioneddeclaration. "And before you get out of this room you're going to tell mewhere he is!"
She met his eyes, studiously, deliberately, as though it took a greateffort to do so. Their glances seemed to close in and lock together.
"Jim!" said the woman, and it startled him to see that there were actualtears in her eyes. But he was determined to remain superior to any of hersubterfuges. His old habit returned to him, the old habit of "pounding" aprisoner. He knew that one way to get at the meat of a nut was to smashthe nut. And in all his universe there seemed only one issue and one end,and that was to find his trail and get his man. So he cut her short withhis quick volley of abuse.
"I've got your number, Elsie Verriner, alias Chaddy Cravath," hethundered out, bringing his great withered fist down on the table top."I've got every trick you ever turned stowed away in cold storage. I'vegot 'em where they'll keep until the cows come home. I don't care whetheryou're a secret agent or a Secretary of War. There's only one thing thatcounts with me now. And I'm going to win out. I'm going to win out, inthe end, no matter what it costs. If you try to block me in this I'll putyou where you belong. I'll drag you down until you squeal like a corneredrat. I'll put you so low you'll never even stand up again!"
The woman leaned a little forward, staring into his eyes.
"I didn't expect this of you, Jim," she said. Her voice was tremulous asshe spoke, and still again he could see on her face that odious andunfathomable pity.
"There's lots of things weren't expected of me. But I'm going to surpriseyou all. I'm going to get what I'm after or I'm going to put you where Iought to have put you two years ago!"
"Jim," said the woman, white-lipped but compelling herself to calmness,"don't go on like this! Don't! You're only making it worse, everyminute!"
"Making what worse?" demanded Blake.
"The whole thing. It was a mistake, from the first. I could have told youthat. But you did then what you're trying to do now. And see what you'velost by it!"
"What have I lost by it?"
"You've lost everything," she answered, and her voice was thin withmisery. "Everything--just as they counted on your doing, just as theyexpected!"
"As who expected?"
"As Copeland and the others expected when they sent you out on a blindtrail."
"I wasn't sent out on a blind trail."
"But you found nothing when you went out. Surely you remember that."
It seemed like going back to another world, to another life, as he satthere coercing his memory to meet the past, the abysmal and embitteredpast which he had grown to hate.
"Are you trying to say this Binhart case was a frame up?" he suddenlycried out.
"They wanted you out of the way. It was the only trick they could thinkof."
"That's a lie!" declared Blake.
"It's not a lie. They knew you'd never give up. They even handicappedyou--started you wrong, to be sure it would take time, to be positive ofa clear field."
Blake stared at her, almost stupidly. His mind was groping about, tryingto find some adequate motive for this new line of duplicity. He keptwarning himself that she was not to be trusted. Human beings, all humanbeings, he had found, moved only by indirection. He was too old a bird tohave sand thrown in his eyes
.
"Why, you welched on Binhart yourself. You put me on his track. You sentme up to Montreal!"
"They made me do that," confessed the unhappy woman. "He wasn't inMontreal. He never had been there!"
"You had a letter from him there, telling you to come to 381 King Edwardwhen the coast was clear."
"That letter was two years old. It was sent from a room in the KingEdward Hotel. That was part of their plant."
He sat for a long time thinking it over, point by point. He becamedisturbed by a sense of instability in the things that had once seemedmost enduring, the sickening cataclysmic horror of a man who finds thevery earth under his feet shaken by its earthquake. His sodden faceappeared to age even as he sat there laboriously reliving the past, thepast that seemed suddenly empty and futile.
"So you sold me out!" he finally said, studying her white face with hishaggard hound's eyes.
"I couldn't help it, Jim. You forced it on me. You wouldn't give me thechance to do anything else. I wanted to help you--but you held me off.You put the other thing before my friendship!"
"What do _you_ know about friendship?" cried the gray-faced man.
"We were friends once," answered the woman, ignoring the bitter mockeryin his cry.
He stared at her, untouched by the note of pathos in her voice. There wassomething abstracted about his stare, as though his mind had not yetadjusted itself to a vast new discovery. His inner vision seemed dazzled,just as the eye itself may be dazzled by unexpected light.
"So you sold me out!" he said for a third time. He did not move, butunder that lava-like shell of diffidence were volcanic and coursing fireswhich even he himself could not understand.
"Jim, I would have done anything for you, once," went on the unhappywoman facing him. "You could have saved me--from him, from myself. Butyou let the chance slip away. I couldn't go on. I saw where it would end.So I had to save myself. I had to save myself--in the only way I could.Oh, Jim, if you'd only been kinder!"
She sat with her head bowed, ashamed of her tears, the tears which hecould not understand. He stared at her great crown of carefully coiledand plaited hair, shining in the light of the unshaded electric-bulbabove them. It took him back to other days when he had looked at it withother eyes. And a comprehension of all he had lost crept slowly home tohim. Poignant as was the thought that she had seemed beautiful to him andhe might have once possessed her, this thought was obliterated by thesudden memory that in her lay centered everything that had caused hisfailure. She had been the weak link in his life, the life which he had sowanted to crown with success.
"You welcher!" he suddenly gasped, as he continued to stare at her. Hisvery contemplation of her white face seemed to madden him. In it heseemed to find some signal and sign of his own dissolution, of his lostpower, of his outlived authority. In her seemed to abide the reason forall that he had endured. To have attained to a comprehension of her ownfeelings was beyond him. Even the effort to understand them would havebeen a contradiction of his whole career. She only angered him. And thehot anger that crept through his body seemed to smoke out of some innerrecess of his being a hate that was as unreasonable as it wasanimal-like. All the instincts of existence, in that moment, reverted tolife's one primordial problem, the problem of the fighting man to whomevery other man must be an opponent, the problem of the feral being, asto whether it should kill or be killed.
Into that unreasoning blind rage flared all the frustration of months, ofyears, all the disappointments of all his chase, all the defeat of allhis career. Even as she sat there in her pink and white frailty she knewand nursed the secret for which he had girdled the world. He felt that hemust tear it from her, that he must crush it out of her body as the pitis squeezed from a cherry. And the corroding part of it was that he hadbeen outwitted by a woman, that he was being defied by a physicalweakling, a slender-limbed thing of ribbons and laces whose back he couldbend and break across his great knee.
He lurched forward to his feet. His great crouching body seemed drawntowards her by some slow current which he could not control.
"Where's Binhart?" he suddenly gasped, and the explosive tensity of thatwheezing cry caused her to look up, startled. He swayed toward her as shedid so, swept by some power not his own. There was something leonine inhis movement, something leonine in his snarl as he fell on her. He caughther body in his great arms and shook it. He moved without any sense ofmovement, without any memory of it.
"Where's Binhart?" he repeated, foolishly, for by this time his greathand had closed on her throat and all power of speech was beyond her. Heswung her about and bore her back across the table. She did not struggle.She lay there so passive in his clutch that a dull pride came to him atthe thought of his own strength. This belated sense of power seemed tointoxicate him. He was swept by a blind passion to crush, to obliterate.It seemed as though the rare and final moment for the righting of vastwrongs, for the ending of great injustices, were at hand. His onesurprise was that she did not resist him, that she did not struggle.
From side to side he twisted and flailed her body about, in his madness,gloating over her final subserviency to his will, marveling how welladapted for attack was this soft and slender column of the neck, on whichhis throttling fingers had fastened themselves. Instinctively they hadsought out and closed on that slender column, guided to it by someancestral propulsion, by some heritage of the brute. It was made to get agrip on, a neck like that! And he grunted aloud, with wheezing andvoluptuous grunts of gratification, as he saw the white face alter andthe wide eyes darken with terror. He was making her suffer. He was nolonger enveloped by that mild and tragically inquiring stare that had sodiscomforted him. He was no longer stung by the thought that she was goodto look on, even with her head pinned down against a beer-stainedcard-table. He was converting her into something useless and broken, intosomething that could no longer come between him and his ends. He wascompletely and finally humiliating her. He was breaking her. He wasconverting her into something corrupt. . . . Then his pendulous throatchoked with a falsetto gasp of wonder. _He was killing her!_
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the smoke of that mental explosionseemed to clear away. Even as he gaped into the white face so close tohis own he awoke to reason. The consciousness of how futile, of howodious, of how maniacal, it all was swept over him. He had fallen low,but he had never dreamed that he could fall so low as this.
A reaction of physical nausea left him weak and dizzy. The flexor musclesof his fingers relaxed. An ague of weakness crept through his limbs. Avertiginous faintness brought him half tumbling and half rolling backinto his chair, wheezing and moist with sweat. He sat there looking abouthim, like a sheep killer looking up from the ewe it has captured.
Then his great chest heaved and shook with hysterical sobbing. When, alittle later, he heard the shaken woman's antiphonal sobs, therealization of how low he had fallen kept him from looking at her. Agreat shame possessed him. He stumbled out of the room. He groped his waydown to the open streets, a haggard and broken man from whom life hadwrung some final hope of honor.
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