The Mystery of Murray Davenport | Page 5

Davenport; or,
indeed, as he had whispered to Larcher, that the illustrator might be one
of the crowd in the restaurant at that very moment. But the proprietress
knew no such person, a fact which seemed to rate him very low in her
estimation and somewhat high in Mr. Tompkins's. The two young men
thereupon hastened to board a car going up Sixth Avenue. Being set

down near Greeley Square, they went into a drug-store and opened the
directory.
"Here's a Murray Davenport, all right enough," said Tompkins, "but
he's a playwright."
"Probably the same," replied Larcher, remembering that his man had
something to do with theatres. "He's a gentleman of many professions,
let's see the address."
It was a number and street in the same part of 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
.
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