The Moonlit Way: A Novel

Her smile was bright and untroubled as she stepped back into the studio, leaning on his arm.

“You dear boy,” she whispered, with the irresponsible undertone of laughter ringing in her voice, “thank you for bothering with my woes. I’ll be rid of them soon, I hope, and then – perhaps – I’ll lead you another dance along the moonlit way!”

On the roof, close to the chimney, the one-eyed man and Soane peered down into the studio through the smeared ventilator.

In the studio Dulcie’s first party was drawing to an early but jolly end.

She had danced a dozen times with Barres, and her heart was full of sheerest happiness – the unreasoning bliss which asks no questions, is endowed with neither reason nor vision – the matchless delight which fills the candid, unquestioning heart of Youth.

Nothing had marred her party for her, not even the importunity of Esmé Trenor, which she had calmly disregarded as of no interest to her.

True, for a few moments, while Barres and Thessalie were on the balcony outside, Dulcie had become 150 a trifle subdued. But the wistful glances she kept casting toward the long window were free from meaner taint; neither jealousy nor envy had ever found lodging in the girl’s mind or heart. There was no room to let them in now.

Also, she was kept busy enough, one man after another claiming her for a dance. And she adored it – even with Trenor, who danced extremely well when he took the trouble. And he was taking it now with Dulcie; taking a different tone with her, too. For if it were true, as some said, that Esmé Trenor was three-quarters charlatan, he was no fool. And Dulcie began to find him entertaining to the point of a smile or two, as her spontaneous tribute to Esmé’s efforts.

That languid apostle said afterward to Mandel, where they were lounging over the piano:

“Little devil! She’s got a mind of her own, and she knows it. I’ve had to make efforts, Corot! – efforts, if you please, to attract her mere attention. I’m exhausted! – never before had to make any efforts – never in my life!”

Mandel’s heavy-lidded eyes of a big bird rested on Dulcie, where she was seated. Her gaze was lifted to Barres, who bent over her in jesting conversation.

Mandel, watching her, said to Esmé:

“I’m always ready to train– that sort of girl; always on the lookout for them. One discovers a specimen once or twice in a decade… Two or three in a lifetime: that’s all.”

“Train them?” repeated Esmé, with an indolent smile. “Break them, you mean, don’t you?”

“Yes. The breaking, however, is usually mutual. However, that girl could go far under my direction.”

“Yes, she could go as far as hell.”

“I mean artistically,” remarked Mandel, undisturbed.

“As what, for example?”

“As anything. After all, I have flaire, even if it failed me this time. But now I see. It’s there, in her – what I’m always searching for.”

“What may that be, dear friend?”

“What Westmore calls ‘the goods.’”

“And just what are they in her case?” inquired Esmé, persistent as a stinging gnat around a pachyderm.

“I don’t know – a voice, maybe; maybe the dramatic instinct – genius as a dancer – who knows? All that is necessary is to discover it – whatever it may be – and then direct it.”

“Too late, O philanthropic Pasha!” remarked Esmé with a slight sneer. “I’d be very glad to paint her, too, and become good friends with her – so would many an honest man, now that she’s been discovered – but our friend Barres, yonder, isn’t likely to encourage either you or me. So” – he shrugged, but his languid gaze remained on Dulcie – “so you and I had better kiss all hope good-bye and toddle home.”

Westmore and Thessalie still danced together; Mrs. Helmund and Damaris were trying new steps in new dances, much interested, indulging in much merriment. Barres watched them casually, as he conversed with Dulcie, who, deep in an armchair, never took her eyes from his smiling face.

“Now, Sweetness,” he was saying, “it’s early yet, I know, but your party ought to end, because you are coming to sit for me in the morning, and you and I ought to get plenty of sleep. If we don’t, I shall have an unsteady hand, and you a pair of sleepy eyes. Come on, ducky!” He glanced across at the clock:

“It’s very early yet, I know,” he repeated, “but you 152 and I have had rather a long day of it. And it’s been a very happy one, hasn’t it, Dulcie?”

As she smiled, the youthful soul of her itself seemed to be gazing up at him out of her enraptured eyes.

“Fine!” he said, with deepest satisfaction. “Now, you’ll put your hand on my arm and we’ll go around and say good-night to everybody, and then I’ll take you down stairs.”

So she rose and placed her hand lightly on his arm, and together they made her adieux to everybody, and everybody was cordially demonstrative in thanking her for her party.

So he took her down stairs to her apartment, off the hall, noticing that neither Soane nor Miss Kurtz was on duty at the desk, as they passed, and that a pile of undistributed mail lay on the desk.

“That’s rotten,” he said curtly. “Will you have to change your clothes, sort this mail, and sit here until the last mail is delivered?”

“I don’t mind,” she said.

“But I wanted you to go to sleep. Where is Miss Kurtz?”

“It is her evening off.”

“Then your father ought to be here,” he said, irritated, looking around the big, empty hallway.

But Dulcie only smiled and held out her slim hand:

“I couldn’t sleep, anyway. I had really much rather sit here for a while and dream it all over again. Good-night… Thank you – I can’t say what I feel – but m-my heart is very faithful to you, Mr. Barres – will always be – while I am alive … because you are my first friend.”

He stooped impulsively and touched her hair with his lips:

“You dear child,” he said, “I am your friend.”

Halfway up the western staircase he called back:

“Ring me up, Dulcie, when the last mail comes!”

“I will,” she nodded, almost blindly.

Out of her lovely, abashed eyes she watched him mount the stairs, her cheeks a riot of surging colour. It was some few minutes after he was gone that she recollected herself, turned, and, slowly traversing the east corridor, entered her bedroom.

Standing there in darkness, vaguely silvered by reflected moonlight, she heard through her door ajar the guests of the evening descending the western staircase; heard their gay adieux exchanged, distinguished Esmé’s impudent drawl, Westmore’s lively accents, Mandel’s voice, the easy laughter of Damaris, the smooth, affected tones of Mrs. Helmund.

But Dulcie listened in vain for the voice which had haunted her ears since she had left the studio – the lovely voice of Thessalie Dunois.

If this radiant young creature also had departed with the other guests, she had gone away in silence… Had she departed? Or was she still lingering upstairs in the studio for a little chat with the most wonderful man in the world?.. A very, very beautiful girl… And the most wonderful man in the world. Why should they not linger for a little chat together after the others had departed?

Dulcie sighed lightly, pensively, as one whose happiness lies in the happiness of others. To be a witness seemed enough for her.

For a little while longer she remained standing there in the silvery dusk, quite motionless, thinking of Barres.

The Prophet lay asleep, curled up on her bed; her alarm clock ticked noisily in the darkness, as though to mimic the loud, fast rhythm of her heart.

At last, and as in a dream, she groped for a match, 154 lighted the gas jet, and began to disrobe. Slowly, dreamily, she put from her slender body the magic garments of light —his gift to her.

But under these magic garments, clothing her newborn soul, remained the radiant rainbow robe of that new dawn into which this man had led her spirit. Did it matter, then, what dingy, outworn clothing covered her, outside?

Clad once more in her shabby, familiar clothes, and bedroom slippers, Dulcie opened the door of her dim room, and crept out into the whitewashed hall, moving as in a trance. And at her heels stalked the Prophet, softly, like a lithe shape that glides through dreams.

Awaiting the last mail, seated behind the desk on the worn leather chair, she dropped her linked fingers into her lap, and gazed straight into an invisible world peopled with enchanting phantoms. And, little by little, they began to crowd her vision, throng all about her, laughing, rosy wraiths floating, drifting, whirling in an endless dance. Everywhere they were invading the big, silent hall, where the candle’s grotesque shadows wavered across whitewashed wall and ceiling. Drowsily, now, she watched them play and sway around her. Her head drooped; she opened her eyes.

The Prophet sat there, staring back at her out of depthless orbs of jade, in which all the wisdom and mysteries of the centuries seemed condensed and concentrated into a pair of living sparks.

XII

THE LAST MAIL

The last mail had not yet arrived at Dragon Court.

Five people awaited it – Dulcie Soane, behind the desk in the entrance hall, already wandering drowsily with Barres along the fairy borderland of sleep; Thessalie Dunois in Barres’ studio, her rose-coloured evening cloak over her shoulders, her slippered foot tapping the dance-scarred parquet; Barres opposite, deep in his favourite armchair, chatting with her; Soane on the roof, half stupid with drink, watching them through the ventilator; and, lurking in the moonlit court, outside the office window, the dimly sinister figure of the one-eyed man. He wore a white handkerchief over his face, with a single hole cut in it. Through this hole his solitary optic was now fixed upon the back of Dulcie’s drowsy head.

As for the Prophet, perched on the desk top, he continued to gaze upon shapes invisible to all things mortal save only such as he.

The postman’s lively whistle aroused Dulcie. The Prophet, knowing him, observed his advent with indifference.

“Hello, girlie,” he said; – he was a fresh-faced and flippant young man. “Where’s Pop?” he added, depositing a loose sheaf of letters on the desk before her and sketching in a few jig steps with his feet.

“I don’t know,” she murmured, patting with one slim hand her pink and yawning lips, and watching him unlock the post-box and collect the outgoing mail. He lingered a moment to caress the Prophet, who endured it without gratitude.

“You better go to bed if you want to grow up to be a big, sassy girl some day,” he advised Dulcie. “And hurry up about it, too, because I’m going to marry you if you behave.” And, with a last affable caress for the Prophet, the young man went his way, singing to himself, and slamming the iron grille smartly behind him.

Dulcie, rising from her chair, sorted the mail, sleepily tucking each letter and parcel into its proper pigeon-hole. There was a thick letter for Barres. This she held in her left hand, remembering his request that she call him up when the last mail arrived.

This she now prepared to do – had already reseated herself, her right hand extended toward the telephone, when a shadow fell across the desk, and the Prophet turned, snarled, struck, and fled.

At the same instant grimy fingers snatched at the letter which she still held in her left hand, twisted it almost free of her desperate clutch, tore it clean in two at one violent jerk, leaving her with half the letter still gripped in her clenched fist.

She had not uttered a sound during the second’s struggle. But instantly an ungovernable rage blazed up in her at the outrage, and she leaped clean over the desk and sprang at the throat of the one-eyed man.

His neck was bony and muscular; she could not compass it with her slender hands, but she struck at it furiously, driving a sound out of his throat, half roar, half cough.

“Give me my letter!” she breathed. “I’ll kill you 157 if you don’t!” Her furious little hands caught his clenched fist, where the torn letter protruded, and she tore at it and beat upon it, her teeth set and her grey Irish eyes afire.

Twice the one-eyed man flung her to her knees on the pavement, but she was up again and clinging to him before he could tear free of her.

“My letter!” she gasped. “I shall kill you, I tell you – unless you return it!”

His solitary yellow eye began to glare and glitter as he wrenched and dragged at her wrists and arms about him.

“Schweinstück!” he panted. “Let los, mioche de malheur! Eh! Los! – or I strike! No? Also! Attrape! – sale gallopin! – ”

His blow knocked her reeling across the hall. Against the whitewashed wall she collapsed to her knees, got up half stunned, the clang of the outer grille ringing in her very brain.

With dazed eyes she gazed at the remnants of the torn letter, still crushed in her rigid fingers. Bright drops of blood from her mouth dripped slowly to the tessellated pavement.

Reeling still from the shock of the blow, she managed to reach the outer door, and stood swaying there, striving to pierce with confused eyes the lamplit darkness of the street. There was no sign of the one-eyed man. Then she turned and made her way back to the desk, supporting herself with a hand along the wall.

Waiting a few moments to control her breathing and her shaky limbs, she contrived finally to detach the receiver and call Barres. Over the wire she could hear the gramophone playing again in the studio.

“Please may I come up?” she whispered.

“Has the last mail come? Is there a letter for me?” he asked.

“Yes … I’ll bring you w-what there is – if you’ll let me?”

“Thanks, Sweetness! Come right up!” And she heard him say: “It’s probably your letter, Thessa. Dulcie is bringing it up.”

Her limbs and body were still quivering, and she felt very weak and tearful as she climbed the stairway to the corridor above.

The nearer door of his apartment was open. Through it the music of the gramophone came gaily; and she went toward it and entered the brilliantly illuminated studio.

Soane, who still lay flat on the roof overhead, peeping through the ventilator, saw her enter, all dishevelled, grasping in one hand the fragments of a letter. And the sight instantly sobered him. He tucked his shoes under one arm, got to his stockinged feet, made nimbly for the scuttle, and from there, descending by the service stair, ran through the courtyard into the empty hall.

“Be gorry,” he muttered, “thot dommed Dootchman has done it now!” And he pulled on his shoes, crammed his hat over his ears, and started east, on a run, for Grogan’s.

Grogan’s was still the name of the Third Avenue saloon, though Grogan had been dead some years, and one Franz Lehr now presided within that palace of cherrywood, brass and pretzels.

Into the family entrance fled Soane, down a dim hallway past several doors, from behind which sounded voices joining in guttural song; and came into a rear room.

The one-eyed man sat there at a small table, piecing together fragments of a letter.

“Arrah, then,” cried Soane, “phwat th’ devil did ye do, Max?”

The man barely glanced at him.

“Vy iss it,” he enquired tranquilly, “you don’d vatch Nihla Quellen by dot wentilator some more?”

“I axe ye,” shouted Soane, “what t’hell ye done to Dulcie!”

“Vat I haff done already yet?” queried the one-eyed man, not looking up, and continuing to piece together the torn letter. “Vell, I tell you, Soane; dot kid she keep dot letter in her handt, und I haff to grab it. Sacré saligaud de malheur! Dot letter she tear herself in two. Pas de chance! Your kid she iss mad like tigers! Voici – all zat rests me de la sacré-nom-de sacrèminton de lettre – ”

“Ah, shut up, y’r Dootch head-cheese! – wid y’r gillipin’ gallopin’ gabble!” cut in Soane wrathfully. “D’ye mind phwat ye done? It’s not petty larceny, ye omadhoun! – it’s highway robbery ye done – bad cess to ye!”

The one-eyed man shrugged:

“Pourtant, I must haff dot letter – ” he observed, undisturbed by Soane’s anger; but Soane cut him short again fiercely:

“You an’ y’r dommed letter! Phwat do you care if I’m fired f’r this night’s wurruk? Y’r letter, is it? An’ what about highway robbery, me bucko! An’ me off me post! How’ll I be explaining that? Ah, ye sicken me entirely, ye Dootch square-head! Now, phwat’ll I say to them? Tell me that, Max Freund! Phwat’ll I tell th’ aygent whin he comes runnin’? Phwat’ll I tell th’ po-lice? Arrah, phwat’t’hell do you 160 care, anyway?” he shouted. “I’ve a mind f’r to knock the block off ye – ”

“You shall say to dot agent you haff gone out to smell,” remarked Max Freund placidly.

“Smell, is it? Smell what, ye dom – ”

“You smell some smoke. You haff fear of fire. You go out to see. Das iss so simble, ach! Take shame, you Irish Sinn Fein! You behave like rabbits!” He pointed to his arrangement of the torn letter on the table: “Here iss sufficient already – regardez! Look once!” He laid one long, soiled and bony finger on the fragments: “Read it vat iss written!”

“G’wan, now!”

“I tell you, read!”

Soane, still cursing under his breath, bent over the table, reading as Freund’s soiled finger moved:

“Fein plots,” he read. “German agents … disloyal propa … explo … bomb fac … shipping munitions to … arms for Ireland can be … destruction of interned German li … disloyal newspapers which … controlled by us in Pari … Ferez Bey … bankers are duped… I need your advi … hounded day and ni … d’Eblis or Govern … not afraid of death but indignant … Sinn Fei – ”

Soane’s scowl had altered, and a deeper red stained his brow and neck.

“Well, by God!” he muttered, jerking up a chair from behind him and seating himself at the table, but never taking his fascinated eyes off the torn bits of written paper.

Presently Freund got up and went out. He returned in a few moments with a large sheet of wrapping paper and a pot of mucilage. On this paper, with great care, he arranged the pieces of the torn letter, 161 neatly gumming each bit and leaving a space between it and the next fragment.

“To fill in iss the job of Louis Sendelbeck,” remarked Freund, pasting away industriously. “Is it not time we learn how much she knows – this Nihla Quellen? Iss she sly like mice? I ask it.”

Soane scratched his curly head.

“Be gorry,” he said, “av that purty girrl is a Frinch spy she don’t look the parrt, Max.”

Freund waved one unclean hand:

“Vas iss it to look like somedings? Nodding! Also, you Sinn Fein Irish talk too much. Why iss it in Belfast you march mit drums und music? To hold our tongues und vatch vat iss we Germans learn already first! Also! Sendelbeck shall haff his letter.”

“An’ phwat d’ye mean to do with that girrl, Max?”

“Vatch her! Vy you don’d go back by dot wentilator already?”

“Me? Faith, I’m done f’r th’ evenin’, an’ I thank God I wasn’t pinched on the leads!”

“Vait I catch dot Nihla somevares,” muttered Freund, regarding his handiwork.

“Ye’ll do no dirty thrick to her? Th’ Sinn Fein will shtand f’r no burkin’, mind that!”

“Ach, wass!” grunted Freund; “iss it your business vat iss done to somebody by Ferez? If you Irish vant your rifles und machine guns, leaf it to us Germans und dond speak nonsense aboud nodding!” He leaned over and pushed a greasy electric button: “Now ve drink a glass bier. Und after, you go home und vatch dot girl some more.”

“Av Misther Barres an’ th’ yoong lady makes a holler, they’ll fire me f’r this,” snarled Soane.

“Sei ruhig, mon vieux! Nihla Quellen keeps like a mouse quiet! Und she keeps dot yoong man quiet! 162 You see! No, no! Not for Nihla to make some foolishness und publicity. French agents iss vatching for her too – l’affaire du Mot d’Ordre. She iss vat you say, ‘in Dutch’! Iss she, vielleicht, a German spy? In France they believe it. Iss she a French spy? Ach! Possibly some day; not yet! And it iss for us Germans to know always vat she iss about. Dot iss my affair, not yours, Soane.”

A heavy jowled man in a soiled apron brought two big mugs of beer and retired on felt-slippered feet.

“Hoch!” grunted Freund, burying his nose in his frothing mug.

Soane, wasting no words, drank thirstily. After a long pull he shoved aside his sloppy stein, rose, cautiously unlatched the shutter of a tiny peep-hole in the wall, and applied one eye to it.

“Bad luck!” he muttered, “there do be wan av thim secret service lads drinkin’ at the bar! I’ll not go home yet, Max.”

“Dot big vone?” inquired Freund, mildly interested.

“That’s the buck! Him wid th’ phony whiskers an’ th’ Dootch get-up!”

“Vell, vot off it? Can he do somedings?”

“And how should I know phwat that lad can do to th’ likes o’ me, or phwat the divil brings him here at all, at all! Sure, he’s been around these three nights running – ”

Freund laughed his contempt for all things American, including police and secret service, and wiped his chin with the back of his hand.

“Look, once, Soane! Do these Yankees know vat it iss a police, a gendarme, a military intelligence? Vat they call secret service, wass iss it? I ask it? Schweinerei! Dummheit? Fantoches! Imbeciles! Of the Treasury they haff a secret service; of the Justice 163 Department also another; and another of the Army, and yet another of the Posts! Vot kind of foolish system iss it? – mitout no minister, no chef, no centre, no head, no organisation – und everybody interfering in vot efferybody iss doing und nobody knowing vot nobody is doing – ach wass! Je m’en moque – I make mock myself at dot secret service which iss too dam dumm!” He yawned. “Trop bête,” he added indistinctly.

Soane, reassured, lowered the shutter, came back to the table, and finished his beer with loud gulps.

“Lave us go up to the lodge till he goes out,” he suggested. “Maybe th’ boys have news o’ thim rifles.”

Freund yawned again, nodded, and rose, and they went out to an unlighted and ill-smelling back stairway. It was so narrow that they had to ascend in single file.

Half way up they set off a hidden bell, by treading on some concealed button under foot; and a man, dressed only in undershirt and trousers, appeared at the top of the stairs, silhouetted against a bright light burning on the wall behind him.

“Oh, all right,” he said, recognising them, and turned on his heel carelessly, pocketing a black-jack.

They followed to a closed door, which was made out of iron and painted like quartered oak. In the wall on their right a small shutter slid back noiselessly, then was closed without a sound; and the iron door opened very gently in their faces.

The room they entered was stifling – all windows being closed – in spite of a pair of electric fans whirling and droning on shelves. Some perspiring Germans were playing skat over in a corner. One or two other men lounged about a centre table, reading Irish and German newspapers published in New York, Chicago, and 164 Milwaukee. There were also on file there copies of the Evening Mail, the Evening Post, a Chicago paper, and a pile of magazines, including numbers of Pearson’s, The Fatherland, The Masses, and similar publications.

Two lithograph portraits hung side by side over the fireplace – Robert Emmet and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Otherwise, the art gallery included photographs of Von Hindenburg, Von Bissing, and the King of Greece.

A large map, on which the battle-line in Europe had been pricked out in red pins, hung on the wall. Also a map of New York City, on a very large scale; another map of New York State; and a map of Ireland. A dumb-waiter, on duty and astonishingly noiseless, slid into sight, carrying half a dozen steins of beer and some cheese sandwiches, just as Soane and Freund entered the room, and the silent iron door closed behind them of its own accord and without any audible click.

The man who had met them on the stairs, in undershirt and trousers, went over to the dumb-waiter, scribbled something on a slate which hung inside the shelf, set the beer and sandwiches beside the skat players, and returned to seat himself at the table to which Freund and Soane had pulled up cane-bottomed chairs.

“Well,” he said, in rather a pleasant voice, “did you get that letter, Max?”

Freund nodded and leisurely sketched in the episode at Dragon Court.

The man, whose name was Franz Lehr, and who had been born in New York of German parents, listened with lively interest to the narrative. But he whistled softly when it ended: