Murder in Any Degree | Page 7

to America. The last years had placed him in the foreground of
the sculptors of the world. He had that strangely excited consciousness
that he was a figure in the public eye. Reporters rushed to meet him on
his arrival, societies organized dinners to him, magazines sought the
details of his life's struggle. Withal, however, he felt a strange
loneliness, and an aloofness from the clamoring world about him. He
remembered the old friendship in the starlit garret of the Rue de
l'Ombre, and, learning Rantoul's address, wrote him. Three days later
he received the following answer:
Dear Old Boy:
I'm delighted to find that you have remembered me in your fame. Run
up this Saturday for a week at least. I'll show you some fine scenery,
and we'll recall the days of the Café des Lilacs together. My wife sends
her greetings also.
Clyde.
This letter made Herkimer wonder. There was nothing on which he
could lay his finger, and yet there was something that was not there.
With some misgivings he packed his bag and took the train, calling up
again to his mind the picture of Rantoul, with his shabby trousers
pulled up, decorating his ankles with lavender and black, roaring all the
while with his rumbling laughter.
At the station only the chauffeur was down to meet him. A correct
footman, moving on springs, took his bag, placed him in the back seat,
and spread a duster for him. They turned through a pillared gateway,
Renaissance style, passed a gardener's lodge, with hothouses flashing in
the reclining sun, and fled noiselessly along the macadam road that

twined through a formal grove. All at once they were before the house,
red brick and marble, with wide-flung porte-cochère and verandas,
beyond which could be seen immaculate lawns, and in the middle
distances the sluggish gray of a river that crawled down from the
turbulent hills on the horizon. Another creature in livery tripped down
the steps and held the door for him. He passed perplexed into the hall,
which was fresh with the breeze that swept through open French
windows.
[Illustration: Rantoul, ... decorating his ankles with lavender and black]
"Mr. Herkimer, isn't it?"
He turned to find a woman of mannered assurance holding out her hand
correctly to him, and under the panama that topped the pleasant effect
of her white polo-coat he looked into the eyes of that Tina Glover, who
once had caught his rough hand in her little ones and said timidly:
"You'll always be my friend, my best, just as you are Clyde's, won't you?
And I may call you Britt or Old Boy or Old Top, just as Clyde does?"
He looked at her amazed. She was prettier, undeniably so. She had
learned the art of being a woman, and she gave him her hand as though
she had granted a favor.
"Yes," he said shortly, freezing all at once. "Where's Clyde?"
"He had to play in a polo-match. He's just home taking a tub," she said
easily. "Will you go to your room first? I didn't ask any one in for
dinner. I supposed you would rather chat together of old times. You
have become a tremendous celebrity, haven't you? Clyde is so proud of
you."
"I'll go to my room now," he said shortly.
The valet had preceded him, opening his valise and smoothing out his
evening clothes on the lace bedspread.

"I'll attend to that," he said curtly. "You may go."
He stood at the window, in the long evening hour of the June day,
frowning to himself. "By George! I've a mind to clear out," he said,
thoroughly angry.
At this moment there came a vigorous rap, and Rantoul in slippers and
lilac dressing-gown broke in, with hair still wet from his shower.
"The same as ever, bless the Old Top!" he cried, catching him up in one
of the old-time bear-hugs. "I say, don't think me inhospitable. Had to
play a confounded match. We beat 'em, too; lost six pounds doing it,
though. Jove! but you look natural! I say, that was a stunning thing you
did for Philadelphia--the audacity of it. How do you like my place? I've
got four children, too. What do you think of that? Nothing finer. Well,
tell me what you're doing."
Herkimer relented before the familiar rush of enthusiasm and questions,
and the conversation began on a natural footing. He looked at Rantoul,
aware of the social change that had taken place in him. The old
aggressiveness, the look of the wolf, had gone; about him was an
enthusiastic urbanity. He seemed clean cut, virile, overflowing with
vitality, only it was a different vitality, the snap and decision of a
man-of-affairs, not the untamed outrush of the artist.
They had spoken scarcely a