The Mystery of Murray Davenport | Page 5

the town with Larcher's abode, but east of Madison Avenue, while his own was west of Fifth. But now his way was to the residence of Barry Tompkins, which proved to be a shabby room on the fifth floor of an old building on Broadway; a room serving as Mr. Tompkins's sleeping-chamber by night, and his law office by day. For Mr. Tompkins, though he sought pleasure and forage under the banners of literature and journalism, owned to no regular service but that of the law. How it paid him might be inferred from the oldness of his clothes and the ricketiness of his office. There was a card saying "Back in ten minutes" on the door which he opened to admit Larcher and himself. And his friends were wont to assert that he kept the card "working overtime," himself, preferring to lay down the law to companionable persons in neighboring cafés rather than to possible clients in his office. When Tompkins had lighted the gas, Larcher saw a cracked low ceiling, a threadbare carpet of no discoverable hue, an old desk crowded with documents and volumes, some shelves of books at one side, and the other three sides simply walled with books and magazines in irregular piles, except where stood a bed-couch beneath a lot of prints which served to conceal much of the faded wall-paper.
Tompkins bravely went for the magazines, saying, "You begin with that pile, and I'll take this. The names of the illustrators are always in the table of contents; it's simply a matter of glancing down that."
After half an hour's silent work, Tompkins exclaimed, "Here we are!" and took a magazine to the desk, at which both young men sat down. "'A Heart in Peril,'" he quoted; "'A Story by James Willis Archway. Illustrated by Murray Davenport. Page 38.'" He turned over the leaves, and disclosed some rather striking pictures in half-tone, signed "M.D." Two men and two women figured in the different illustrations.
"This isn't bad work," said Tompkins. "I can recommend 'M.D.' with a clear conscience. His women are beautiful in a really high way,--but they've got a heartless look. There's an odd sort of distinction in his men's faces, too."
"A kind of scornful discontent," ventured Larcher. "Perhaps the story requires it."
"Perhaps; but the thing I mean seems to be under the expressions intended. I should say it was unconscious, a part of the artist's conception of the masculine face in general before it's individualized. I'll bet the chap that drew these illustrations isn't precisely the man in the street, even among artists. He must have a queer outlook on life. I congratulate you on your coming friend!" At which Mr. Tompkins, chuckling, lighted a pipe for himself.
Mr. Larcher sat looking dubious. If Murray Davenport was an unusual sort of man, the more wonder that a girl like Edna Hill should so strangely busy herself about him.

CHAPTER II
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ONE OUT OF SUITS WITH FORTUNE
Two days later, toward the close of a sunny afternoon, Mr. Thomas Larcher was admitted by a lazy negro to an old brown-stone-front house half-way between Madison and Fourth Avenues, and directed to the third story back, whither he was left to find his way unaccompanied. Running up the dark stairs swiftly, with his thoughts in advance of his body, he suddenly checked himself, uncertain as to which floor he had attained. At a hazard, he knocked on the door at the back of the dim, narrow passage he was in. He heard slow steps upon the carpet, the door opened, and a man slightly taller, thinner, and older than himself peered out.
"Pardon me, I may have mistaken the floor," said Larcher. "I'm looking for Mr. Murray Davenport."
"'Myself and misery know the man,'" replied the other, with quiet indifference, in a gloomy but not unpleasing voice, and stepped back to allow his visitor's entrance.
A little disconcerted at being received with a quotation, and one of such import,--the more so as it came from the speaker's lips so naturally and with perfect carelessness of what effect it might produce on a stranger,--Larcher stepped into the room. The carpet, the wall-paper, the upholstery of the arm-chair, the cover of the small iron bed in one corner, that of the small upright piano in another, and that of the table which stood between the two windows and evidently served as a desk, were all of advanced age, but cleanliness and neatness prevailed. The same was to be said of the man's attire, his coat being an old gray-black garment of the square-cut "sack" or "lounge" shape. Books filled the mantel, the flat top of a trunk, that of the piano, and much of the table, which held also a drawing-board, pads of drawing and manuscript paper, and the paraphernalia for executing upon both. Tacked on