The talkers

Sutton slept late. The telephone beside his bed rang repeatedly but did not awaken him. He was still stupid with sleep when he opened his eyes. From habit he rang for coffee and a newspaper. And he was preparing for further sleep when he remembered what had happened the night before.

Instantly his startled brain cleared; he snatched his coat from the chair, discovered the slip bearing the telephone number, seized the receiver, and called her.

Only when he recognised her voice did he realise what a panic possessed him. Intense relief rendered him inarticulate for the moment.

“Yes?” she repeated; but her voice was almost a whisper.

“This is Stuart Sutton speaking,” he managed to say.

After a pause “Yes, Mr. Sutton?”

“I am very anxious to know how you are today?”

“I am—well.”

“Do you feel any ill effects?”

“None.”

“No pain?”

“None.”

“Have you heard from Sadoul?”

“No,” she replied in a ghost of a voice.

“Do you expect to?”

“No.”

Her brevity disconcerted him. He said: “I should like to see you again. Would you be at home at five?”

There was a pause. Then her voice again almost inaudible: “I did not imagine you would wish to see me again.”

“Why not?”

“The inconvenience—annoyance I put you to——”

“Good heavens! Could you help being ill? Let me come down——”

“I’m ashamed—I could not face you—I haven’t the—the assurance—Mr. Sutton——”

“I’m coming to see you at five,” he interrupted confidently.

Waiting for a reply, after a little while he heard it very faintly: “Good-bye, then.”

A servant brought his breakfast and usual Sunday newspaper, a swollen bundle of coloured print. He got back into bed and took the tray on his knees. Coffee, clear, was all he could tolerate. Nor did the bloated Sunday paper appeal to any need in him.

For now, all the confused emotions of the night before were astir again. Vivid recollections, both poignant and charming, flared in succession—his encounter with Gilda Greenway; his gay, irresponsible courtship, her shyness; then her sudden response and swift embrace; and then the swifter tragedy—all the horror of it—every circumstance—the warm scent of roses in the room, the distant laughter, music, the girl’s dead eyes fixed on him through her slitted mask, death stamped on the pallid, upturned face, his fear and horror!——

And suddenly he remembered his demand for justice—saw himself again, scared, half stunned, down beside her bed—heard again his own plea to the Source of Life—to “The Unknown God.”

And now remembered that God and gods were easily proven to be myths where The Talkers gather to explain all things to all men, and play at God one with another.

Had the Unknown God answered his demand? Was this a resurrection? A miracle? A reply? Had the girl really died who now was alive?

He wished to believe so. His recent fright had left him receptive, humble—grateful, too, to somebody.

He lay back on his pillow, willing, anxious to be reassured, inviting memories long dormant—recollections of quieter years—safe years—the years when problems were simple—when the Source of Life was God—a God who protected, who took the heavy responsibility of the world from a boy’s shoulders.

Lying there with his arms crossed behind his crisp, blond head, he tried to remember whose daughter it was who had been raised from the dead.

A sinister and forbidding legend of the Old Testament kept intruding among his thoughts; but it was not of Jephthah’s daughter he had been thinking—not of pagan sacrifice and bloody altars, but of the still brightness shining from Christ.... And of a little dead girl whom he made alive again....

The Talkers had explained it, offering several solutions so that a wistful world, reproved and disillusioned, might take its choice:

The episode was a myth; or, whosesoever daughter it was had not been dead at all but in a coma; or, the account was not to be taken literally because it was merely metaphor, Oriental imagery—all Orientals being fond of extravagant analogy—etc., etc.

Sutton was becoming perplexed and troubled, wavering between a boyish need and a boy’s respect for The Talkers—“The Talkers who talk of the Beginning and the End.”

He got up heavily, looked at his watch. By half past four he had completed his toilet, and was already leaving the room when the telephone rang.

It was Sadoul’s voice, strained, scarcely controlled:

“Sutton? Are you crazy? I’ve been trying to find you all day——”

“What’s on your mind, Sadoul?” he interrupted.

“Where did you send that body?” demanded Sadoul harshly. “I’ve called the morgue and the hospitals——”

“Nonsense! The girl woke up and went home.”

“Good God! You tell me she’s—alive!”

“Rather. Your friend Pockman made a fool of himself. It looks like malpractice to me——”

“Do you mean—mean to tell me that she got up and—and went away?”

“I do. She was quite all right—except where that ass Pockman jabbed her in the neck.”

“Where did she go?” demanded Sadoul in a strangled voice.

“Home, I believe.”

Sadoul’s voice had become almost a whisper: “Where does she live, Sutton?”

“You ought to know; you brought her to Derring’s.”

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“Why do you ask me?”

“You know where she lives, don’t you?”

“Possibly. Does that ass Pockman want to experiment further with her?”

Sadoul’s voice became harsher: “Sutton, she was dead! Absolutely dead! She had been dead three hours when Pockman operated. He knows she was dead. So does Miss Cross. If she is actually alive now, it is Sidney Pockman who put life into a corpse! And it is Pockman’s right to know where to find her. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Not entirely.”

“Well, understand this, then: Gilda Greenway is a friend of mine. I have known her for years. She is alone in New York——”

“You left her alone, too, when you thought her dead, Sadoul.”

“Will you tell me where she is?” demanded Sadoul, violently.

“Why do you assume that I know?”

“Because everybody saw how you behaved with her last night. You’re headed for trouble if you continue.”

“Trouble with you?”

“Perhaps. Now, are you going to tell me where she lives, or not?”

“Probably—not,” drawled Sutton.

“Will you tell Pockman where to find her?”

“I’ll consider that matter.”

“Are you trying to make an enemy of me, Sutton?”

“I’m not trying to, Sadoul.”

“Then tell me where Gilda Greenway lives.”

“I’ll tell her that you inquired. Then it will be up to her.”

“You promise to tell her?”

“Yes,” said the other curtly.

“Will you ask her to communicate with me? And tell her it’s vitally important——”

“I’ll tell her that you say it is.”

“When do you expect to see her?”

“At her convenience, Sadoul.”

There was a pause; then: “Very well, Sutton.” And Casimir Sadoul was off the wire, leaving a most disagreeable impression on Sutton.

Presently it occurred to him that he might even be spied upon and followed if he lingered. He took his hat, overcoat and stick, went out and down in the lift, stopped a taxi, and directed the chauffeur to drive toward the Park.

He was surprised at himself for his disinclination to reveal Gilda Greenway’s whereabouts to Sadoul; more surprised, still, that Sadoul should be ignorant of her address.

It had begun to snow again; the air was hazy with fine particles but not very cold.

The Sunday traffic on Fifth Avenue was not heavy; but by the time his taxi reached the Plaza it was time to turn around.

He alighted before the row of basement shops on Thirty-fifth Street, exactly at five o’clock.

A moment later, on the second landing, Gilda Greenway herself opened her door to him.

“How d’you do?” she murmured, in flushed confusion. “My maid takes Sundays out, but I’ve made tea—if you care for it——”

She lingered shyly while he disposed of overcoat, hat and stick, then led the way into her living room, where a tea-tray stood beside a wood fire.

“It’s amazing to me,” he said, “that you seem to feel so perfectly well. You look wonderfully fit, too.”

“Why, it was only a very little wound,” she protested. “I’m disgusted with myself——”

“May I look at it?”

She bent her head obediently. Like many people with red hair, her skin was that dazzling, snowy white which flushes easily; and now a swift, shell-pink stain deepened and waned as he examined the closed wound.

“It’s healing perfectly,” he said. “This is absolutely astonishing.”

She straightened herself, turned and poured tea, the colour still vivid in her cheeks.

“It was so absurd of me to faint,” she said, “—so humiliating——”

“I’d scarcely call it that. It was tragic. Did you know that you were unconscious for six hours?”

“How ghastly!”

“Rather. We thought you dead, you know.”

For an instant she failed to grasp the startling import of what he had said; then, looking quickly around at him:

“Are you serious, Mr. Sutton?”

He decided to enlighten her; and he told her as much as he himself understood of the affair, speaking gravely enough to impress without frightening her.

Gilda Greenway’s gaze never left his face. There was no fear in her eyes, only growing astonishment.

When he had ended his narrative, her first comment startled him:

“How perfectly awful for you, Mr. Sutton!”

“For me!”

“Your horrid situation—if I had really died!”

There was a silence. Her face had become very grave and she shuddered slightly once.

Presently she said: “You were more than kind to me. I—hadn’t realized——”

“I did nothing——”

“You sat there all night because you thought me dead. Is that nothing?”

“One doesn’t leave the dead alone all night—” he muttered.

“The others did. Even Sadoul.”

He was silent.

“So they all thought me dead,” she murmured. “And they all went away—even Casimir Sadoul——”

Reminded suddenly of Sadoul’s message, he gave it to her.

“I don’t want Sadoul to know where I live,” she said quickly. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“I’ve known him for some time. He’s very clever and amusing, when he chooses.”

“Yes, I know,” she said in a low voice, “I know Sadoul.”

There was a silence, then they spoke of other things. She had become diffident, almost unresponsive. Unless he spoke of the night before, conversation seemed difficult; for these two had no real knowledge of each other—no knowledge at all save for that brief flash of passion amid the mocking unreality of masquerade.

“I am wondering how you happened to go to Derring’s party with Sadoul?” he ventured at last.

The girl blushed scarlet. “I—I met him quite by chance on the street two weeks ago. I hadn’t seen him for—months. We talked. I lunched with him. He asked me to go with him to Mr. Derring’s party, and he described the costumes to be worn. I wanted to go. I had to have a dinner gown anyway, this winter—or thought I had to have one.... Last night I put on my costume here and drove in a taxi to the St. Regis, where Sadoul was waiting under the porte cochère.... That is how it happened.”

They were busied with their tea for a while before he ventured a lighter tone.

“I am considering the eccentric capers of Fate,” he said.

She looked up at him.

“When your mask slipped as we passed,” he went on, “it was Fate that loosened it. Do you doubt it?”

Her lowered face was all surging with colour now; she bent over her cup, motionless.

That the girl dreaded further reminiscences was pathetically plain to him. And again her shyness puzzled him as it had the night before. Because one scarcely expected to meet a novice at one of Derring’s parties.

Again he became conscious of the subtle charm of her—felt the faint, sweet warmth of her presence invading him.

“It would have been a jolly party if—” he stopped short, aware already of his mistake.

She sat with head averted, but he suspected tears. After a little while she crumpled her handkerchief, nervously, touched her eyes with it.

“You are still under the strain,” he said in a low voice. “No wonder. But it came out all right, thank God——”

“I—I can’t—bear——” She shrank back against the sofa and hid her face in her arms.

“There’s nothing to feel that way about,” he said, reassuringly. “Everything is all right now——”

“I—I can’t bear it!—what happened. I can’t endure the thought of—of what they m-must have done to me——”

He reddened but said coolly: “There was nothing unusual—when one is desperately ill——”

“They treated me as—as the dead are treated——”

“The physician and the nurse——”

“Sadoul was there.... Were you?”

“No,” he said, lying.

After a while he ventured to unclasp the desperate fingers from their clutch on the sofa—ventured to raise her to a sitting posture.

“Come,” he repeated confidently, “it’s all over. You’re behaving like a kid,” he added, forcing her to turn her head.

The glimmering eyes opened on him, closed quickly, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.

“It’s all over,” he insisted; “isn’t it?”

He held both her hands. She released them. “Yes,” she whispered, “it is all over—all of it—all, all!...” She slowly straightened her shoulders, slowly dried her cheeks, still sitting there with closed eyes. And speaking so:

“It’s the end.... And a new beginning.... I think the girl you knew really did die last night.... I am not that girl.”

“Oh, yes, you are, Gilda Greenway,” he said cheerfully; “you are that very same and very delightful Queen in Green!”

“Do you think so?”

Her eyes unclosed. She considered him curiously, her gaze wandering over him almost absently.

The room had grown dusky. She reached behind her and lighted the lamp on the piano.

“That’s jolly,” he said. “I wonder if you feel like playing something.”

“Would you like it?”

She stood up mechanically, moved to the piano and seated herself.

After a moment a deadened chord or two broke the stillness. Then the old and well-known melody of Schubert grew more softly ominous in the demi-light, lingered in deep, velvety pulsations, slowly expired. Silence absorbed the last muffled chord. The girl’s hands drooped motionless; she lifted her deep green eyes and looked across the piano at Sutton. Her face was partly masked by the transverse shadow of the lampshade.

“What was it you played?” he asked.

“‘The Young Girl and Death.’”

“That’s a cheerful jazz,” he remarked, getting up. He took an uncertain step or two, looked at her irresolutely, then went over to the piano and leaned on both elbows.

“We mustn’t turn morbid,” he said. “We’ve had the shock of our lives, but it won’t do to brood on it.... I want you to be as you were last night.”

She looked up at him, her hands still resting on the keys.

“You were so jolly—such a bashful, charming kid,” he added.

Something suddenly glimmered in her shadowed eyes.

“Are you smiling?” he asked.

“I think I—am.”

“Well, it’s about time! I’m trying to remember what it was I said that made you laugh, just before you—you were taken ill.”

She could not seem to recall it; absently ran a scale or two; rested.

“We were beginning to have such a gay evening together—weren’t we?” he insisted.

“Yes.... I enjoyed it.”

“The fact is,” he went on, “I kidnapped you, didn’t I?”

“Kidnapped? Are you really so old?” In her shadowy eyes the glimmer appeared again.

“No, I’m not very aged, but Sadoul—I stole you from him, you know.”

“Did you find it—difficult?”

She moved as she spoke, and the lamp-light fell full across her face.

Again he was conscious of warmth in his veins—of a heart quickening a little in the shy revelation of her smile.

And again he tried to account for her presence at Derring’s party, where there was more pulchritude than bashfulness, and more experience than both.

About Gilda Greenway there seemed always a hint of wistful inexperience—a sort of unchastened innocence, which was not without its provocation, too.

In his rather brief career, Sutton had never encountered what is called “danger” among women within his own caste or outside of it. Only the male ass need dread the “vamp”; but he never does.

As for all the subtler species known as dangerous, from cradle-snatcher to the married-but-misunderstood, few had floated within his social ken where, on the Hudson, ancient respectability in substantial estates maintained colonial tradition in summer, and modest but grim town houses in winter.

Smiling at the girl, now—wondering a little concerning her—and curious, too—he asked her whether, like most of the others at Derring’s, she was on the stage.

It seemed she was not.

“Nor in pictures?”

“No.”

Her reserve was a smiling one, yet not encouraging him to further inquiry.

“You dance so delightfully,” he said, “that I thought—perhaps——”

“No; I don’t do anything, Mr. Sutton.”

He dissented and tapped the piano as emphasis.

“Oh, I play a little.”

The bench she was seated upon was long and narrow. He stepped around the piano; she laughed and made room for him.

“Tell me about all your accomplishments,” he insisted.

“They are too numerous to catalogue. I can cook if I have to; make a bed, wash windows, read, write, add and subtract——”

“Are you American, Gilda?”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve lived elsewhere?”

“Abroad.”

It was plain that she had little inclination to speak of herself.

He wondered why she was living alone in New York. Suddenly he desired to ask her other questions—from whom she inherited her delicate beauty and shy manners—her cultivated speech, her pretty green eyes.

“Don’t you want to tell me anything about yourself?” he asked.

“It isn’t necessary, is it?”

He laughed. “There is no necessity about the matter, you funny child!”

She seemed relieved for a moment, then a little troubled.

“What worries you, Gilda?” he demanded, still smiling.

“Nothing.... Would it be impertinent for me to ask your advice before we really know each other?”

“Nonsense! What is it?”

“There are several things I would like to ask you—if I might——”

“For example?” he inquired, much amused.

“Well, one thing is that I have some money. I’d like to ask you how to invest it.”

“Good heavens!” he said. “You don’t know anything about me! I might be the King of the Crooks, for all you——”

She did not seem to notice what he was saying, for she went on very seriously:

“—Also, I’d like to have you recommend to me a lawyer whom you believe trustworthy——”

“Enter crook number two! All right, Gilda. What else?”

“Quite a number of things—when we begin to know each other—a little——”

“Haven’t we even begun to know each other?”

“Why, no,” she said, surprised.

“Then isn’t it rather rash of you to ask me about investments?”

She smiled at him. It was her charming answer—as pretty a compliment as ever was paid a man.

“Gilda Greenway,” he said with youthful rashness, “ask me anything and I’ll do my best! You seem to know I will, too; but how you guessed it, I don’t know.”

He got up, took a short turn or two, stood looking at nothing for a few moments.

“Don’t tell Sadoul where I live,” she said in a low voice.

He swung around: the girl’s expression had changed and her face seemed shadowy and pale.

“No,” he said, “I shall not tell Sadoul.... Are you feeling ill?”

“Not ill——”

She rose abruptly, and again her changed expression struck him. It seemed almost as though her features had altered subtly—as though something familiar was fading, something he had forgotten in her face was becoming vaguely visible.

“I want you to go, please,” she said in a dazed way.

“If you are feeling ill——”

“No, not ill.... You must go.”

“But, Gilda, don’t you want me to come again?”

“Yes.... Telephone me.... But you must go!—oh, please!—please!——”

The strangeness of her face silenced him.

She followed to the little hall, waited for his departure, her face averted. To his perplexed and troubled adieux her response was inaudible.

The next moment the door closed behind him and he stood alone in the wintry dusk of the shabby corridor.