Romance Island | Page 4

to step in a cab and follow his mother to the grave, where his stepfather refused to have her coffin opened. And St. George, fresh from his Alma Mater, had weighted the winged words of his story with allusions to the tears celestial of Thetis, shed for Achilles, and Creon's grief for Haemon, and the Unnatural Combat of Massinger's father and son; so that Chillingworth had said things in languages that are not dead (albeit a bit Elizabethan) and the composing room had shaken mailed fists.
"Hi, you!" said Little Cawthorne, who was born in the South, "this is a mellow minute. I could wish they came often. This shall be a weekly occurrence--not so, St. George?"
"Cawthorne," Chillingworth warned, "mind your manners, or they'll make you city editor."
A momentary shadow was cast by the appearance of Rollo, who was manifestly a symbol of the world Philistine about which these guests knew more and in which they played a smaller part than any other class of men. But the tray which Rollo bore was his passport. Thereafter, they all trooped to the table, and Chillingworth sat at the head, and from the foot St. George watched the city editor break bread with the familiar nervous gesture with which he was wont to strip off yards of copy-paper and eat it. There was a tacit assumption that he be the conversational sun of the hour, and in fostering this understanding the host took grateful refuge.
"This is shameful," Chillingworth began contentedly. "Every one of you ought to be out on the Boris story."
"What is the Boris story?" asked St. George with interest. But in all talk St. George had a restful, host-like way of playing the r?le of opposite to every one who preferred being heard.
"I'll wager the boy hasn't been reading the papers these three months," Amory opined in his pleasant drawl.
"No," St. George confessed; "no, I haven't. They make me homesick."
"Don't maunder," said Chillingworth in polite criticism. "This is Amory's story, and only about a quarter of the facts yet," he added in a resentful growl. "It's up at the Boris, in West Fifty-ninth Street--you know the apartment house? A Miss Holland, an heiress, living there with her aunt, was attacked and nearly murdered by a mulatto woman. The woman followed her to the elevator and came uncomfortably near stabbing her from the back. The elevator boy was too quick for her. And at the station they couldn't get the woman to say a word; she pretends not to understand or to speak anything they've tried. She's got Amory hypnotized too--he thinks she can't. And when they searched her," went on Chillingworth with enjoyment, "they found her dressed in silk and cloth of gold, and loaded down with all sorts of barbarous ornaments, with almost priceless jewels. Miss Holland claims that she never saw or heard of the woman before. Now, what do you make of it?" he demanded, unconcernedly draining his glass.
"Splendid," cried St. George in unfeigned interest. "I say, splendid. Did you see the woman?" he asked Amory.
Amory nodded.
"Yes," he said, "Andy fixed that for me. But she never said a word. I _parlez-voused_ her, and _verstehen-Sied_ her, and she sighed and turned her head."
"Did you see the heiress?" St. George asked.
"Not I," mourned Amory, "not to talk with, that is. I happened to be hanging up in the hall there the afternoon it occurred;" he modestly explained.
"What luck," St. George commented with genuine envy. "It's a stunning story. Who is Miss Holland?"
"She's lived there for a year or more with her aunt," said Chillingworth. "She is a New Yorker and an heiress and a great beauty--oh, all the properties are there, but they're all we've got. What do you make of it?" he repeated.
St. George did not answer, and every one else did.
"Mistaken identity," said Little Cawthorne. "Do you remember Provin's story of the woman whose maid shot a masseuse whom she took to be her mistress; and the woman forgave the shooting and seemed to have her arrested chiefly because she had mistaken her for a masseuse?"
"Too easy, Cawthorne," said Chillingworth.
"The woman is probably an Italian," said the telegraph editor, "doing one of her Mafia stunts. It's time they left the politicians alone and threw bombs at the bonds that back them."
"Hey, Carbury. Stop writing heads," said Chillingworth.
"Has Miss Holland lived abroad?" asked Crass, the feature man. "Maybe this woman was her nurse or ayah or something who got fond of her charge, and when they took it away years ago, she devoted her life to trying to find it in America. And when she got here she wasn't able to make herself known to her, and rather than let any one else--"
"No more space-grabbing, Crass," warned Chillingworth.
"Maybe," ventured Horace, "the young lady did settlement work and read