Chapter XLI At Cross-Purposes
As the door swung into place behind him, with the unmistakable click of a spring lock, Lawrence stood there, every nerve tense, glancing swiftly around into the shadows, half expecting an attack of some sort.
The hall was lighted by a single gas jet turned down to the tiniest spark, and for a moment he thought himself alone. Then, with a suppressed start, he realized that a tall, slim, smooth-shaven man stood silently by the portières of a double door, watching him with cool, level, dark eyes.
“Well?” snapped Barry, recovering his composure. “Where is she? Quick! What have you done with her?”
The stranger smiled. “One flight up, on your right,” he drawled nonchalantly. “You can’t miss it. The door’s unlocked.”
For a second Lawrence stared at him dazedly. With every nerve keyed to its highest tension, expecting, and ready to use force, and with visions of having to break down doors and overcome all sorts of obstacles to reach the girl he was seeking, the utter indifference and casual politeness were staggering. He scowled fiercely at the urbane stranger for an instant, the color rising to his face; then, whirling about, raced up the stairs without a word.
The upper hall was almost pitch dark, but he thrust out both hands and felt the panels of a door on his right. A second later his fingers closed over a knob, he pushed forward, then stopped still on the threshold, blinking in the bright light, with the echoes of a faint, suppressed cry of a woman ringing in his ears.
The room was long and spacious, that effect being heightened by several full-length mirrors, with massive, old-fashioned frames of black walnut, set into the walls at different points. The furniture was mostly of that same mid-Victorian period, ponderous, ugly, and uncomfortable, with a good deal of fringe and furbelows and gimcrack ornament. It was only in contrast to the hall that the place seemed brightly lighted. In reality, the only source of illumination was a nickel lamp with a dark-green china shade, which stood on a marble table at the farther end.
Most of this Barry perceived in that curious, instinctive, intuitive manner with which one observes a thing without really looking at it. His whole mind was taken up with the girl who had started from her chair and was staring at him, a half-frightened, half-puzzled, wholly incomprehensible expression on her lovely face.
“Shirley!” he cried, springing forward impulsively. “You’re all right? They haven’t—hurt you in any way?”
To his amazement, she did not show the slightest sign of being glad to see him. On the contrary, she seemed almost frightened; and the quick backward step she took to place the table between them, no less than the look in her dark eyes, halted Lawrence in his tracks as effectually as a bullet might have done.
For a second he stood there staring at her, the color swiftly ebbing from his face.
“I don’t—understand,” he said at length, in a low, bewildered tone. “What is the matter? It isn’t possible that you’re—afraid of me?”
She moistened her lips and, putting out one hand, let the tips of her gloved fingers rest lightly on the table top. From the moment of his entrance her eyes had never left Barry’s face, and now, as he saw them clearly in the lamplight, the look there was like the stab of a knife.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly; and Lawrence saw that it was the calmness of deliberate effort. “I don’t think it’s quite—that.”
“But what is the matter? What has happened?” He flung out both hands in an eloquent gesture. “Why are you acting so strangely?” After all he had been through, after the strain and stress and mental suffering he had been laboring under, this frigid reception, so different from the one he had imagined when he dared to picture their meeting at all, was almost unnerving. “You must tell me what it means!” he cried.
Her lips quivered, but she caught them between her teeth and tilted her chin a little more. She still wore her hat—a wide one of black velvet, with curving brim and soft black plumes. Her sable coat was flung over the back of a nearby chair; and as she faced him—slim, erect, palpitating with life and charm and fascination, Lawrence realized that she had never seemed so beautiful—or so utterly beyond his reach.
“I think,” she returned steadily, “that you are the one to tell me that.”
The man turned suddenly white and drew his breath sharply. In a second every feature seemed to have become tense and hard and clean-cut as if fashioned from marble. When he spoke his voice was low and clear, but there was a faint, throbbing undercurrent which showed plainly how difficult it was for him to keep it so.
“It isn’t possible that you believe me responsible for this?” he said.
For an instant the girl did not answer. Her lips were quivering unmistakably now; her self-control was plainly strained almost to the breaking point.
“How do I know what to believe?” she cried suddenly. “How do I know whom to trust?” A sob arose in her throat, and she fumbled in her sleeve for a tiny handkerchief. “Oh, why did you try to keep it from me?” she went on despairingly. “Why didn’t you tell me at first, and then we should never have——”
She could not finish, and the swift glimpse Barry had of those dark eyes, swimming with tears, before she hid them with her handkerchief, almost drove him mad.
“Tell you what?” he demanded dazedly. “For Heaven’s sake what is it you think I’ve kept from you? Surely you don’t mean that trouble at the bank? You must have known that I never——”
She silenced him with a gesture and dropped both hands straight by her sides. There was a glint of tears still in her dark eyes, but she had recovered her composure with remarkable rapidity.
“It isn’t that,” she said wearily. “It’s far more important than any bank. I know—everything. You understand? And it—hurts desperately to think that I had to hear from—-a stranger—that you——”
She stopped abruptly as a brisk knock sounded at the door. Before either of them could speak it swung open, and two men entered quietly, closing it behind them.