Her Forbidden Knight (12 page)

From the restaurant they went to a concert.

“Some day, after they’re filled in, I’ll take you down and show you my swamps,” said Knowlton as they parted three hours later at Lila’s door. “And it does matter what you think. You know it does. Good night.”

They shook hands gravely, as was their custom.

Thereafter their meetings were less frequent. Knowlton explained that his new position took more time than he had expected and complained considerably of his trials and tribulations in the disposal of swamp lots.

But his appearance and manner contradicted him. There was a new light in his eyes, a new spring in his step, a new note of freedom in his voice. Lila wondered at it.

But he still managed to see her two or three evenings a week, and in one particular it would have seemed to the ordinary mind that he had lost a job instead of getting one.

Instead of taxicabs, they patronized the elevated and subway. Instead of orchids, he sent Lila roses and violets. Instead of
de luxe,
expensive editions his book presents were dressed in ordinary cloth and leather.

“To be perfectly frank, I must economize,” he had explained one evening.

Lila had exclaimed:

“I am glad!”

Though he attempted all the way downtown to get her reason for this peculiar sentiment, she obstinately refused to give it. The truth was she hardly knew her reason herself, but she felt vaguely that both the fact and his frank confession of it brought them closer together.

This, she admitted to herself, meant happiness—the only happiness she could ever have.

As for Knowlton—well, the troubles of a salesman of real estate belong properly to comedy. That is a fact. But it would be unsafe to declare it in the presence of a real-estate salesman.

Knowlton was having his full share of the usual troubles, plus a few that were peculiar to himself. He will not soon forget that month.

In the first place he was perfectly well aware that he was being shadowed by Sherman. At times he was inclined to regard it as a joke; at others it caused him serious anxiety.

More than once he started for the Lamartine to discover whether he was acting for the Erring Knights or on his own account, but something held him back—perhaps a remembrance of Sherman’s attempted bluff on the day of their first meeting. How much did Sherman know?

Then, as nothing resulted from the long-continued mysterious activities of the amateur detective, Knowlton gave him less and less thought.

Besides, he had no time for mysteries or Erring Knights. He was selling real estate. Not trying to—he was really selling it.

One evening when he called for Lila she found a taxicab waiting at the door as they descended the stoop.

“You see,” Knowlton explained after they had settled themselves comfortably on the cushions and the cab had started forward, “I am getting to be quite a businessman. Really, I didn’t think I had it in me. I’m fast becoming a bloated plutocrat. Someday you’ll be proud of me.”

“Not for that reason,” said Lila.

“Then there’s my last chance gone,” Knowlton laughed. “For Heaven knows I’ve nothing else to be proud of—except that you are my friend,” he added, suddenly serious.

But Lila, being in a gay mood, refused to humor him.

“Am I your friend?” she said thoughtfully.

“Aren’t you?”

“I’m just trying to decide. I do like parts of you. When you are gay you’re very jolly company. When you are serious you are impossible. It seems to me that I could get the most out of your friendship by taking a scientific course in the art of titillation.”

“Who would you practise on?”

“Oh—my cat. Goodness knows she’s grave enough—she needs it. And if it will work with her—”

“Cats never laugh,” Knowlton declared solemnly.

“What frightful ignorance!” exclaimed Lila, with immeasurable scorn. “Did you never hear of the Cheshire?”

“Cheese?”

“No. Cat.”

“But that was a grin. She didn’t laugh. The distinction is subtle, but important.”

“Well, anyway,” Lila sighed, “it ought to be effective with you.”

“But why do I need it?”

And thus they pretended to wrangle, with neither sense nor intention, till the cab stopped in front of the restaurant.

After dinner they attended a concert of one of the metropolitan string quartets. The program was short, and they arrived at Lila’s room before half past ten, their hearts filled with the singing magic of Haydn.

“It’s early,” said Lila at the door. “Won’t you come up and read to me—or talk?”

Knowlton replied that he had an engagement downtown at midnight, which left him an empty hour, and that he would rather spend it with her than anywhere else, and if she were sure he wouldn’t annoy her—

“Come,” Lila smiled, starting toward the stairs. Knowlton followed.

They talked of the concert. Then Knowlton read a portion of
Otho the Great,
while Lila lay back in an easy chair with closed eyes.

Now and then he would stop, asking softly, “Are you asleep?” and Lila would slowly open her eyes and smile at him and shake her head.

The tones of his voice, though lowered, filled the room with the musical cadences of the Poet of Beauty.

At the end of the second act he looked at his watch and closed the book suddenly, observing that he had only twenty minutes to get downtown.

“I suppose you are going to sell a swamp,” said Lila, rising from her chair. “But what an hour!”

Knowlton did not answer. He found his coat and hat and said good night. At the door he turned and there was a new note in his voice—of seriousness and deep feeling—as he said:

“Tomorrow I shall have something to say to you. It has been hard to keep from telling you before, but I felt I had no right. Then—thank God—I shall be free. And I don’t want to wait till evening. Will you lunch with me?”

Lila said “Yes,” and before she could speak further Knowlton continued:

“I will call for you at the Lamartine at twelve o’clock, if that isn’t too early. Tomorrow—at noon.”

He turned and departed hurriedly, without giving her time to answer.

At the door he glanced at his watch—a quarter to twelve. He had dismissed the cab. He started at a rapid pace for the Elevated station on Columbus Avenue and barely caught a downtown train.

During the ride he kept glancing impatiently at his watch. Beside him on the seat was a late evening newspaper and he picked it up and tried to read, but was unable to compose himself. His midnight engagement was evidently not with a prospective customer.

At Twenty-eighth Street he left the train, walked east to Broadway, and entered a café on the corner.

The café was very similar to a thousand others on that street and in that neighborhood. It was half filled with men and completely filled with tobacco smoke. On the right was the bar; to the rear a series of partitions and doors leading to the inner rooms; on the left, a few tables and chairs and a row of stalls with leather seats surrounding wooden tables.

Knowlton glanced quickly round, noted that the hands of the clock above the bar pointed to a quarter past twelve, then walked slowly down the room in front of the stalls, glancing in at the occupants of each as he passed.

At the fifth stall he halted. The man seated there looked up quickly, and at sight of Knowlton rose to his feet and held out his hand.

“You’re late,” he said gruffly.

Knowlton, without replying, edged his way into the corner and sat down.

The man gazed at him curiously.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You look pale.”

“Don’t talk so loud,” said Knowlton, glancing at a group of three men who had halted within a few feet of the stall.

“All right,” the other agreed good-naturedly. “Anyway, there’s not much to say.”

Reaching in his inside overcoat pocket, he drew forth a small flat package about the size of a cigar-box, wrapped in brown paper.

“Here’s the stuff,” he continued, placing the package on the seat beside Knowlton. “Shove it away quick. The usual amount—two hundred at one-tenth.”

“I don’t want it.”

The words came from Knowlton in a whisper and with an apparent effort; but his manner was calm and unruffled.

The other half rose from his seat.

“Don’t want it!” he cried; but at a warning glance from Knowlton he dropped back and continued in a whisper:

“What’s up now? Cold feet? I always thought you was a baby. You’ve got to take it.”

Knowlton repeated with calm decision:

“I don’t want it. I’m through.”

There ensued a controversy lasting a quarter of an hour. Knowlton was quiet but determined; the other, insistent and nervously excited. Several times Knowlton cautioned him to speak lower, as the same group of men remained standing near the stall, and others were constantly passing within earshot.

Finally, finding Knowlton utterly immovable, the man sighed resignedly and picked up the package and replaced it in his pocket.

“If you won’t, you won’t,” he said. “And now, pal, let me tell you something: you’re a wiser guy than I thought you was. They’re after us. I beat it on the one-thirty tonight for Montreal.”

“And yet—” Knowlton began indignantly.

“No, I wasn’t.” the other interrupted. “I wouldn’t have let you sow it here. All I wanted was the two hundred, then I’d put you next. But you was next already.”

Knowlton smiled, knowing the uselessness of any attempt to explain his own motives, and rose to depart, when the other, remarking that he was about due at the station, rose also, and they left the café together. In front they parted, with a smile and a good word. Knowlton walked home with a singing heart, thinking and dreaming of the morrow.

Twenty minutes later, in a room not twenty blocks away from the one where Knowlton was sleeping peacefully, two men were conversing in low, eager tones.

One, a tall, dark man with an evil countenance, was sitting on the edge of the bed dressed in pajamas; the other, with overcoat and hat, was standing in front of him.

“He spent twenty minutes at a café on Twenty-eighth and Broadway, talking with Red Tim,” one was saying.

“And who is Red Tim?” asked the man on the bed.

“Number something-or-other in the gallery down at headquarters. Known from Frisco to the Battery. Just now he seems to be shoving the queer. He tried to give a bundle to your man, but he said he was through, and wouldn’t take it.

“Evidently, though, he has some of it—your man, I mean. I could have taken Red Tim with the goods on, but I was looking out for you. It might have wised your man to the game.”

The man on the bed was calm and thoughtful.

He asked some questions, and his eyes lit up with satisfaction at the answers.

“You’ve done well, Harden,” he said finally. “I suspected this, and now I guess we’ve got him. It’s too late to try to do anything tonight. Come round early in the morning; I may need you. Here’s a ten. Good night.”

The other, who had turned to go, stopped at the door to call back:

“Good night, Mr. Sherman.”

T
HE
E
RRING
K
NIGHTS HAD FOR TWO MONTHS
been divided into hostile camps, in support of two widely differing doctrines.

One division, consisting of Dumain, Driscoll, and Jennings, advanced the argument that it was no part of their duty to protect Lila against herself, and that if she chose to disregard their solemn warnings against Knowlton it was up to her.

The other division, to which Dougherty, Booth, and Sherman belonged, declared that they owed it to Miss Williams and to themselves to throw Knowlton from the top of the Flatiron Building, or cut him up into very small pieces, or tie him to a rock at the bottom of New York Bay.

They were all pretty good talkers, and they had many wordy discussions, renewed every time they saw Knowlton enter the lobby and take Lila out with him. They concocted many schemes, and at one time even went so far as to consider an offer from Sherman to procure the services of an East Side gang.

But they never did anything. They talked too much.

This was not without its utility. It furnished any amount of amusement to the Venus at the cigar stand.

If Dougherty approached to buy a cigar, or light one, she would whisper mysteriously, “Is he dead?” and pretend unbounded amazement when informed that Knowlton had been allowed to live a day longer. And all that was needed to start Dumain off on a frenzied oration was for her to observe scornfully: “Gee, I thought a Frenchman had some nerve!”

But most successful of all was her conundrum: “Why are the Erring Knights like the Republican party?” The answer, wrung from her after several days of entreaties and threats, was: “Because their protective system is on the fritz.”

But to the Erring Knights themselves the thing was no joke. They talked and schemed and discussed and argued. Dumain and Driscoll were strong for moderation, and succeeded in holding the others in check, sometimes even going so far as to threaten to support Knowlton when the others became unusually reckless in their suggestions. But the attacks of Booth and Dougherty, and especially Sherman, were persistent, and they began to weaken.

On the morning following the events narrated in the preceding chapter Dougherty entered the lobby earlier than usual and found Dumain and Jennings talking to Miss Hughes. Walking over to the cigar stand, he grunted, nodded to the Venus, and pointed with his finger to his particular brand.

“A little off-color?” said Miss Hughes, setting the box in front of him on the counter.

“Best you’ve got?” Dougherty grunted, selecting a cigar.

“Oh, I meant you!” she grinned. “The cigars are all right. You look like you’d been playing the title role at a leather wedding.”

“Huh!” Dougherty grunted.

“Let heem alone,” Dumain smiled. “He has zee temperament. He ees veree dangerous.”

This awakened Dougherty.

“Shut up!” he exploded. “When I’m like I am now I’m bad.”

Whereupon Dumain giggled and Jennings roared. Dougherty started for them, and they retreated to the leather lounge in the corner.