CHAPTER VI.
IS THE GIRL HONEST?
In a small oyster-house near the Park they found something to eat, and Dick also found that he had saved the life of a remarkably pretty girl.
At any other time Dick Treadwell would have scorned to eat dinner—and such a dinner—at such a place. This night he not only ate, but enjoyed it. He never noticed the uninviting appearance of the big, fat German waiter who had, when they first came in, leaned with both hands on the table and said briefly, and with a rising accent, “Beer?”
He slapped his dirty towel over the sticky circular spots on the table as Richard ordered dinner from a card that looked as if it had never served any other purpose than that of fly-paper.
The waiter went out, after receiving the order, carefully closing the door after him. The room was evidently meant for small parties, for the only thing in it was the table and four chairs.
“Don’t you think the room is too warm?” Dick asked, and hardly waiting for his guest’s reply, he got up and opened wide the door.
The waiter spread a cotton napkin over the table before Dick and Dido Morgan, and set some pickles and crackers, and pepper and salt, and two little bits of butter, the size and shape of a half dollar, on the table; then he brought the clams.
This done he went out again, very carefully closing the door after him. Richard called to him, but he did not answer, so Dick got up and opened the door himself. Dido Morgan looked at him with an innocent, questioning smile. She had no idea that Dick could possibly have any other reason for opening the door, than that it made the room cooler. When the waiter came in the next time he closed the door. Richard’s face flushed angrily as he said sternly:
“I wish that door open. You will please leave it so.”
The waiter gave an impudent, almost familiar grin, but the door was open during the rest of the dinner.
As Dido Morgan sat opposite Dick eating daintily but appreciatively, the color came into her dark, creamy cheeks, and her brown eyes sparkled like the reflection of the sun in a still, dark pool. Her loose, damp hair, hanging in little rings about her broad brow and white throat, was very appealing to the artistic sense.
And her look—it was so frank, so sincere, so trusting, and her eyes had such a way of looking startled, that Dick felt a warmer thrill of interest invade his soul than he ever thought possible for any other girl than Penelope.
Before dinner was finished Richard had called her “Miss Dido,” and “Dido,” and she had not even thought of resenting it.
There are a great many false ideas that are forgotten in such moments as these.
The one had seen the other face death, and a human feeling had for the time swept all false pretenses and hollow etiquette away.
They drove down to Mulberry Street in a coupé, and if such a thing was unusual to the young girl whom Richard rescued, it was well hidden under a manner of ease that suggested familiarity.
“There is where Maggie Williams lived,” she said, as they turned down Mulberry Street. Richard leaned forward, but in the semi-light got little idea of the appearance of the place.
“She may have gone from there by this time,” Dido continued, showing a slight hesitation that threatened to shake Dick’s not over-strong confidence in her. “She lived there when I went away, but so many things happen in such short time among the poor.”
“Don’t stop the driver,” she said, quickly, as Dick pounded on the glass with the head of his walking-stick. “Drive on to the corner. It is such an unusual sight to see a carriage stop before these houses, that it would likely attract a crowd, and you don’t want to do that.”
“Why?” asked Dick, curiously. When he could not see her face he liked her less.
“Well, you look so unlike the people who live in this neighborhood, and if you attract notice, you might find it a very uncomfortable place for an elegant young man to be in at almost midnight,” Dido Morgan said, with a light laugh; then, taking matters into her own hands, she opened the door of the coupé, and called the driver to stop.
Richard had no sooner dismissed the driver than he regretted it. He again felt the old mistrust of the strange girl, and recollections of tales he had read of female trappers and the original snares they lay for their victims returned forcibly to his mind.
He felt he was a fool to come here at night, but he was ashamed to go back now. The night was warm and the heat had driven many of the people out of the tenements in search of a breath of air, and the dark groups of silent men and women who filled the door-steps and basement entrances and curbstones, and the ill-favored people who passed them offered Dick little hope for succor, if indeed he was the victim of a plot.
There were no policemen to be seen anywhere, although Dick knew the police headquarters were not far distant.
Quietly he walked beside the girl, who, too, had grown silent. He scorned to confess his fears, and he felt a determination to meet what there might be waiting for him, even if it be death, before he would weaken and retreat.
The girl entered the doorway of a dark, dilapidated house, the only doorway which had no lounger, a fact in itself suspicious to Dick. He, with many misgivings and a decided palpitation of the heart, stumbled on the step as he started to follow.
Had he done right and was he safe in trusting and following this clever girl?
Before he had time to decide she caught his hand and led him into the dark hall.
A little weak thought, that doubtless holding his hand was part of the plan to give him less chance for self-defense, flashed through his mind.
Gropingly he put forth his other hand, and a thrill of horror shot through him like an electric shock as it came in contact with a man’s coat and a warm, yielding body.