CHAPTER II

THE SQUALID HOUSE

Relic of the horse-and-carriage days was the Gilmore stable, with living quarters for the now obsolete coachman and footman. Kirklan Gilmore, that he might have more detachment and quiet than the house afforded, had remodeled the stable into a studio, and here it was that he did his writing. Success in anything means hard work, and authorship is no exception. Being a successful novelist, he was a hard worker, but for weeks now, except for a mildly curious visit by Helen, who had been frankly disappointed in the unpretentiousness of her husband's workshop, the place had been locked. The manuscript of the new novel, for which his publishers waited fretfully, lay untouched and uncompleted.

It was two days after Joan's home-coming. As had been customary since her arrival at Greenacres as a bride, the new Mrs. Gilmore was having a breakfast tray in her room, and she sat at a small table by the window which commanded Joan Sheridan's beloved view of the Tappan Zee.

Frilly, lacy things were becoming to the new mistress of Greenacres, and she was an alluring picture, with the loose, flowing sleeves of her morning gown falling back from shapely arms, as she lifted her coffee cup. Morning is the severest test of a woman's beauty, and, only twenty minutes out of bed, although it was half an hour past nine, Helen Gilmore was undeniably a beautiful woman. Her age might have been twenty-three; it may have been even twenty-seven, for she was of the type that clings long to youth. Just now, however, there was in her blue eyes a look of brooding discontent that does not become a bride of three brief, honeymooning weeks.

At the hallway door there sounded the rap of knuckles against wood, and in answer to the petulant, "Yes, come," Bates, the butler, crossed the threshold with his shambling gait.

"Mail for you, madam," said Bates, holding a silver tray toward her. The topmost envelope was patently an advertising circular, which completely concealed the one beneath, and Helen with a contemptuous glance waved the tray aside.

"You should know better than bothering me with things like that," she said shortly; "take it away."

"There is also a letter--a personal letter," Bates answered stiffly, as he moved aside the offending advertisement, and revealed a small, cheap envelope, rather smudgy and addressed with a lead pencil in a ragged, scrawling script, as if the hand that wrote it was not far advanced beyond illiteracy. The postmark was New York City.

Rather a strange, disreputable-looking missive, one might have thought, to be received by the mistress of Greenacres. Bates stared sharply, as he saw the startling effect that the sight of the letter had on Mrs. Gilmore. Her coffee cup, poised for a moment in mid-air, clattered down to the saucer, and her fingers, reaching swiftly for the envelope, trembled noticeably. Her face had gone white, and into her eyes there came a look that was unquestionably apprehension, perhaps fear. With an effort she controlled herself.

"Probably from my little nephew," she said, evidently thinking to explain the smudgy appearance, the crudity of the handwriting. But Bates, moving toward the door with the perfunctory murmur, was not misled.

"Huh, little nephew!" he grunted, as he went down the hall. "That was a man's handwritin'. Poor Mr. Kirklan! I'm afraid he's been fooled--fooled bad."

When the butler had gone, Helen Gilmore relaxed self-restraint, and there returned to her face that haunted look of fear. Several times she turned the envelope over in her unsteady hands, delaying the opening of it.

"He's traced me here!" she whispered. "He knows."

After another moment of hesitation she opened the envelope and drew forth a sheet of paper. Quickly her eyes went over the scrawl. It began with the address, "Dear Mrs. Gilmore," and the last two words of that were underscored, as if there was a concealed gibe in the "Mrs. Gilmore."

I want to talk with you on some business. If you don't want me to come there, you better come to see me. Phone Joe's place & he'll tell you where I am.

It was unsigned, but no signature was needed for her to know the identity of the sender; she knew that all too well. Her hands clenched, crushing the paper between her fingers.

"Oh, what a fool I've been to take this chance!" she exclaimed bitterly. "He'll hound me, as he hounded me before. I--I thought I'd got away from him for good. I thought he was----"

A step sounded down the hall, a quick step that she had learned to know during the past three weeks. Hastily she thrust the crumpled letter and its envelope into the bodice of her morning gown and, as the door opened, forced a smile to her lips.

"Good morning, my dear," she greeted her husband. "Your indolent wife is just finishing her breakfast. You look as if you had been up for hours, and you must be going somewhere!"

Kirklan Gilmore, clad in a gray business suit, instead of white flannels, blazer coat, and canvas Oxfords that he wore for his mornings at home, crossed the room eagerly and bent to kiss the lips raised dutifully to him.

Gilmore was dark, while his wife was fair. He was slender, and his eyes had something of a poet's dreaminess in them--black eyes, with an intense light when he felt any strong emotion, either personally or through the characters that he put down on paper and breathed the breath of life into. He sat down beside the narrow table and touched his fingers in a gentle caress to the back of his wife's hand, as his eyes devoured her fondly.

"You don't know how wonderful you are, Helen! If I could only put you into a book--as you are. But I'm afraid it would turn out to be a volume of poetry, and poetry doesn't make a best seller. You--you are the most beautiful thing that ever lived!"

Despite an agitation that she could hardly keep from being observed, Helen flushed, and her eyes lighted with pleasure. She liked being told she was beautiful. It was the one story that never grew old to her.

"Thanks, Kirklan; it's nice of you to say that--especially in the morning. Why the street clothes? Are you going somewhere?"

"Yes, I am, worse luck. That slave-driving publisher of mine has called a halt to our honeymoon. A wire came from him this morning, commanding me to come in town and see him. I know what that means; he's going to pep me and send me back to my knitting. Well, we can't blame Atchinson for that; I've promised him the new book for winter publication. Thank Heaven, it's two thirds finished. I thought we might run into New York together; make the trip in the car, you know. There'll be lunch with Atchinson."

Helen managed to look languid and bored. "Lunch with that old pill, Atchinson? It doesn't appeal to me; but don't you think we might go away while you are finishing the book? It will take you weeks upon weeks, and that means I've got to stick around this poky hole, mooning around by myself, while you're locked in that old stable for endless hours. I'd like to go away, Kirklan."

Kirklan patted his wife's hand.

"I'd like to, Helen, but I'm used to things out here, and a change usually upsets my work very badly. I've got to dig in now for all I'm worth. Poky old hole? I thought you liked Greenacres."

"I don't; I hate it. Oh, don't start harping about 'the scenery;' the scenery's all right for a change, but I'm fed up on it. Outside of gawking around the country, there's nothing to do but get up, eat, and then go to bed again. I don't know why we couldn't go down to--well, Atlantic City, while you're finishing the book."

"Oh, tut!" Gilmore reproved mildly. "You've just got out on the wrong side of the bed this morning. It's quite impossible for us to go away. It won't be lonesome for you now that Joan is back. She's no end of good fun, Joan. Greatest little pal in the world. And that reminds me that I must ask her to help me straighten out the sixteenth chapter. There's a little something it lacks, and I can always depend on Joan to supply just the right touch."

Helen laughed, but not pleasantly. "Yes," she said with an edge of sarcasm, "that stepsister of yours and I would make great pals--not! It's all that she can do to be civil. Sometimes I feel that she actually hates me!"

"That's nonsense, Helen. Joan hate you? How ridiculous! Joan never hated any one in her life."

"It's not ridiculous!" flared Helen; she was one of those persons who always flared when contradicted. She could not brook opposition, even verbal opposition. "I tell you, Miss Sheridan dislikes me intensely."

"She might be a little hurt--temporarily," admitted Gilmore. "I'm sorry we didn't leave the room alone until she got back. Perhaps it doesn't seem quite right, moving her out while she was away."

"Every one in the house looks upon me as--as an interloper," Helen rushed on. "Even the servants--I can feel their antagonism toward me. I don't know why I should be asked to--to tolerate such treatment."

"Try and look at things more calmly," soothed Gilmore. "Naturally, everything seems strange to you at first. Both my stepmother and Joan are wonderful, Helen--real mother and sister to me. You'll learn to love them very much; please, Helen, for my sake, you'll try."

"And you expect to let them make their home with us permanently?" she demanded bitterly.

Kirklan Gilmore looked uncomfortable, unhappy; this was the first rift in the lute. He was discovering that his wife, after all, was not quite the perfect woman. It is a painful realization for a new husband.

"W-well," he said slowly, "I hadn't thought of that. This has been my stepmother's home for almost twenty years, and, while it belongs to me legally, I wouldn't think for a moment of pitching her out." He paused for a moment, and his tone had a touch of wistfulness in it. "It's always been my home, too, Helen. To me there is no place quite like Greenacres; I--I wish you'd really try to be happy here."

Helen did not respond with that sympathetic understanding he had hoped for, and Kirklan, of course, could not know that the receipt of the letter only a few minutes before had filled her with a desperate anxiety to flee from the thing that threatened her.

"You--you won't--take me away?" she persisted.

"Helen, you don't know how hard it is for me to deny you any wish. Heaven knows I want to make you happy, but can't you understand that we've got to be practical? My studio is here; my library is here; and it's here that I've always done my best work. At least wait until the book is finished, and then, if you still do not like Greenacres, we--we will see what we can do." There was, despite his conciliatory tone, a note of firmness, and Helen, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders, dismissed the subject temporarily.

"You won't go into town with me?" asked Gilmore. "It will be a change, and I think you'll find it a pleasant trip in the car."

Helen thought swiftly and came to a decision. She did want to go to New York, but certainly not with her husband; she must forestall any effort of the unsigned sender of that letter to see her at Greenacres. The sooner the better.

"Why don't you use the train, Kirklan, and let me have the car?" she suggested. "I'd like to take the ferry across the river to Nyack and drive out toward Tuxedo."

Gilmore agreed promptly. "Suppose you take Joan along," he suggested. "You can't help liking her after the first strangeness wears off; really you've no idea what a perfect little brick she is."

Helen shook her head. "No," she refused, "I'd rather be alone to-day." And that much was true.

Gilmore looked at his watch and moved toward his wife for a parting embrace; it was the first time he had left her, even for a trip to New York, and, madly in love with Helen as he was, the prospect was depressing.

"You'll be careful about driving," he warned. "Stay on the country roads and out of the traffic; you're still a bit new at it, you know. I've just time to get the ten-thirty train."

There was no thought in Helen's mind, despite her decision to make a secret trip into the city, of risking the heavy and perilous traffic of New York. Her plan was to run the car across country to White Plains, and there board the Boston & Westchester interurban electric. In this way, she reasoned, she would avoid the Grand Central Station and the possibility of getting back on the same train with her husband.

How the most cunning of plans go astray!

After a reluctant leave-taking--reluctant on Kirklan's part--he went downstairs with the idea of getting Joan to drive him down to the station and bring the car home, but Joan was nowhere in evidence, so he had to call on Billings, who looked after the grounds and who could drive in an emergency. Billings was a silent, taciturn sort of fellow, and this silence suited Gilmore's mood exactly.

Helen's attitude worried him; her discontent alarmed him. Suddenly it occurred to him that in the two days since Joan's return he had seen his stepsister only at dinner and a few minutes afterward. Thinking it over, he wondered if Joan had been quite her usual, jolly self; if she had purposely avoided him.

Gilmore felt guilty about taking Joan's room, but it is hard to deny a wife of a few days, and Helen had actually demanded it. It never entered his mind that there might be some other reason, a deeper, more vital reason for Joan's attitude--that she feared, until the first shock of it had passed, she might unwittingly let him see into her heart. He made up his mind that on his return he would have a talk with Joan and let her know how sorry he was about the room.

A few minutes after Billings let him off at the station, the train rushed in from the north, and Gilmore got aboard. During the forty-five-minute run to New York he remained depressingly thoughtful.

"I guess, at that, it's a bit dull for Helen at Greenacres--and will be even more dull when I've got to lock myself in with my work. I ought to have some company down, I suppose, to liven things up for her a bit. I'll see who I can drum up for the next week-end."

This decision gave him a feeling of relief, as it automatically solved the problem of his wife's discontent with rural life.

Arriving at Grand Central Station, Gilmore took a taxi to the office of his publishers and, less than half an hour later, was in conference with Atchinson regarding the unfinished novel. The latter was a dynamic sort of fellow, a voluble enthusiast, and their talk lengthened until it was past one o'clock. He had read the carbon copy of what had been written and felt that it promised to have a greater success than "Rogue's Paradise."

"We've decided to try illustrations with this book of yours," Atchinson was explaining. "I've selected Victor Sarbella to do the job. Sarbella draws splendid pictures--faces with life and character in them. He's one of those intense fellows. Half Italian, you know, although his mother was an American. You've met him, of course?"

Gilmore nodded. "Yes, I know Sarbella; interesting chap; and, say, that gives me an idea. I had been thinking of having some people down to Greenacres. Helen is finding it a bit lonesome. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have Sarbella come out?"

Atchinson beamed. "That's fine! He can pick out some of the dramatic situations with you and get the spirit of your characters. He's devilish slow in turning out work, and I don't want to run any chances of spoiling the drawings by rushing him. Suppose we call him up right now and get that part of it settled."

Word became action, as the publisher reached for the telephone and asked the firm's private switchboard operator in the outer office to get Victor Sarbella's apartment for him. A few minutes later the matter was arranged, and Atchinson glanced at his watch.

"Phew!" he whistled. "Half past one, old man; we'd better hurry out and have a bite of lunch. Speaking of Italians, what do you say to one of those Italian feeds? I'm always digging up new places to eat and I've run across a splendid little restaurant, where the food's uncommonly good even if the location is poor--in the upper Forties."

Kirklan Gilmore agreed indifferently. "Most anything will suit me," he said.

The two left the publishing-house building, and, Atchinson talking almost incessantly and not always to the point, they started out.

"Suppose we leg it," suggested Gilmore; "it may give me a little zest for lunch."

"I'm for that," Atchinson said heartily; "it's only a dozen blocks." How many things hinge on trifles! As they neared Eighth Avenue, passing along this cheap and squalid street, which one found it hard to believe was so near to pretentious Broadway. Atchinson's emphatic voice jarred to an abrupt stop, his hand caught at the novelist's arm.

"Hello!" he exclaimed. "Isn't that Mrs. Gilmore yonder?"

"You mean my wife? Oh, that's impossible. Where?"

But his eyes had looked too late. The woman Atchinson had seen was gone, disappeared swiftly into one of those grimy, ugly entrances before he could so much as glimpse her.

"I'd take my oath that was Mrs. Gilmore," muttered the publisher, giving a puzzled stare at the sign across the way which announced, "Furnished Rooms. Rates $3 Weekly and Up." Since Helen had worked in the publishing office for two months, he felt certain he had not been mistaken.

"That's ridiculous!" snorted the author. "She took the car and motored out to Tuxedo. Besides, what would Helen be doing in a neighborhood like this?"

Atchinson, feeling very uncomfortable, was wondering precisely the same thing. "Humph!" he grunted. "I must have been mistaken; yes, no doubt I was. Some one who looked like her."

But this was friendly diplomacy; he had got a square look, and he knew quite positively that he had not been mistaken. The woman who had hurried, almost furtively, into the cheap, unclean lodging house was Kirklan Gilmore's wife!