The Substitute Prisoner | Page 3

of the waiting taxicab and held it ajar while she entered.
Balancing himself on the edge of the curb, the bluecoat stared after her in undisguised admiration until the cab swung around the corner; then he bestowed a curious glance on the house whence she had come. He saw that the door was half open and that a man's figure stood revealed in the soft light of the hallway. One hand was on the door knob, one foot was thrust forward as if the man were uncertain whether to plunge after her. Evidently he decided against venturing out, for he stepped back into the vestibule and shut the door.
"Even these people have their little scraps," the bluecoat murmured sagely, and passed on.
Herbert Whitmore did not return to the room in which he had received the visitor. Instead, he ascended the stairs to the library, and threw himself into the soft embrace of a wide leather chair.
The turmoil of his brain gave him an uncomfortable feeling of excitement, as if he were participating in something active and swift, which he but partly understood. He was incapable of connected thought--everything was vague and shadowy before him. In a dim way he recognized that he was standing in the way of an approaching avalanche, and gradually he began to discern the nature of the impending catastrophe. Presently the vague uncertainty that hovered before his mind resolved itself into action, and his groping forefinger pressed a button hidden beneath the carved edge of the library table. In response to the pressure, a liveried butler entered the room.
"Did you mail the letter I gave you?" inquired Whitmore.
"Yes, sir."
"When?"
"Immediately you gave it to me."
"That was about four hours ago?"
"Yes, sir."
"That is all."
The butler effaced himself from the room as noiselessly as he had entered, and again Whitmore gave himself up to the alarming predicament in which he found himself.
His reflections centered about the letter which the butler had mailed. It was not sent in a moment of impulsiveness. The information which it conveyed was not offered in spite, or in anger, or in envy. It was the deliberate act of a man habituated to clear thinking and correct action. Viewed with full knowledge of all the surrounding circumstances, that letter must be regarded as the noble outpouring of a chivalrous love, honest, worthy, unselfish. Regarded without the illumination of the complex conditions which called it forth, the letter was pregnant with possibility of mischief.
It was addressed to Mrs. George Collins. And George Collins must not be permitted to intercept it.
With the single resolve to frustrate Collins actuating his movements, Whitmore went to his apartment, slipped on his topcoat, and left the house. He paused at the corner to consult his watch. It was eleven o'clock.
He was sufficiently acquainted with the city to know that over on Seventh Avenue certain shops kept open until midnight. He had passed them frequently after theater and observed the industrious proprietors and barkers noisily soliciting trade on the sidewalk.
Down Fifth Avenue Whitmore swung at a rapid pace, turning west at Forty-second Street. Through the swirling crowds at Broadway he threaded his way, finally entering the gloomy thoroughfare that cuts a somber, murky streak through the illuminated area of Times Square.
Even Whitmore, engrossed as he was in his own affairs, could not help a feeling of depression as with a single step he emerged from the throbbing life and light of Broadway into the shabby darkness of Seventh Avenue. For nowhere in the big city is the contrast of its extremes brought home so sharply as at this intersection of three busy thoroughfares.
It is worth while to pause a moment in the blatant glare of that monstrously hideous variety house, that architectural malformation that defaces the northwest corner; or opposite in the shadow of the gray illumined tower that mounts undaunted, a connecting ladder between earth and sky. Especially profitable is it to pause a moment at the hour when the neighboring theaters are discharging their crowds, and to glance behind and beyond the furious activity that bewilders the eye and dazzles the senses. If you have the eye to see and the mind to appreciate, you will behold an illuminated canvas whereon is depicted, within the limited area of your vision, everything that a great city holds of wealth and poverty, beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow, luxury and squalor, purity and degradation, truth and falsehood. It is all there, in this narrow environment, with the lights and the shadows meeting and blending, as the noise from below merges with the silence above.
Nothing of these vivid contrasts struck the sense of Whitmore as with nervous steps he hurried toward his destination. In the first place, familiarity with the scene had deprived him of the faculty to read its pitiless meaning; secondly, a