One of My Sons — Rain

Towards this light we moved.

XXVII RAIN

Suddenly the figure of a man stepped out before us.

It was too dark to see his face, but his voice had a familiar sound as he said: "It's all right.

He's there.

I saw him go in a half-hour ago."

"Very good.

My man, Sweetwater," explained Mr. Gryce, turning for an instant towards me; then, in hurried tones to the other, "Do you know on which floor he is to be found; and whether the man at the bar suspects what's up?"

"If he does, he's pretty quiet about it.

All looks natural inside.

But you can't tell what whispers have gone about.

As for him, he's chosen his place with his usual indifference to consequences.

He's in one of the attic rooms, sir, well back, and can be reached from the outside by means of a shed that slopes up almost to the window-ledge.

If he wanted to escape, he could easily do so by a drop of only four feet.

But I have left a man on watch there and our young gentleman would fall into arms that wouldn't let him go in a hurry.

Will you come around that way?

There's a light in the window and there's neither curtain nor shade to hinder a man's looking in.

If you wish, I can crawl up on the roof I spoke of and take a peep at our doves before we venture upon disturbing them."

"It can do no harm," rejoined the older detective; "and if the girl is where she can be seen, this gentleman can go up afterwards and identify her.

It will mean surer and quieter work than approaching them by the stairway.

The house is full, I suppose?"

"Chuck."

And with this characteristic word Sweetwater melted from before us as if he had been caught up in one of the swirls of wind and rain that ever and anon swept through the alley, dashing our faces with wet and making our feet unsteady on the slippery pavement.

I began to feel strange and unlike myself.

The night, the storm, the uncongenial place, our more than uncongenial errand, were having their effect, lending to that dark entrance into one of the worst corners of our great city a sense of mysterious awe which has caused it to remain in my memory as something quite out of the ordinary experiences of life.

It was not a long alley, and we soon reached the light I have mentioned.

We could hear voices now, loud voices raised one moment in contention, the next in drunken cheer; and, thrilling through it all, a woman's tones singing some bewildering melody.

It was not the voice of Mille-fleurs.

I could never have mistaken that--but it was a young voice, and did not lack sweetness in the low notes.

As I was listening to it, something flew flapping into my face.

It was a piece of damp paper peeled from some billboard by a wandering gust and sent scurrying through the air.

I tore it away from my eyes, drawing a deep breath like a person suddenly released from suffocation; but I shall not soon forget the effect of that cold slap in the face at the moment when my every nerve was on tension.

Mr. Gryce, who had seen nothing,--it was hardly possible to see in the deluge which now swept down upon us,--gave me a pull which drew me from before the swinging door I was unconsciously making for, into a corner where I found myself more or less shielded from the wind if not from the rain.

The alley had an L, and leading down from this L was a narrow passage, within which we now stood, surrounded by reeking walls and facing (whenever the fury of the storm abated sufficiently for us to look up) an opening into what might be called a labyrinth of back-yards.

As I was bracing myself to meet all alarms, real or imaginary, associated with this noisome place, I beheld a sudden figure emerge from the opening and hastily approach us.

It was Sweetwater again.

He had just descended from his clamber over the roofs, where he seemed to be as much at home as a cat.

"Lucky that it rains so," he panted; "keeps the kids in.

Otherwise some of us would have been spotted long ago.

There are about fifty of them in this one house."

Then I heard him whisper in the ear that was necessarily very near mine: "It's all right up there.

I can see his figure plainly.

He's sitting with his back to the window, but there's no mistaking Leighton Gillespie.

He's in dinner dress, just as he came from his own table in Fifth Avenue.

The girl----" "Well, what of the girl?"

"Is in one of her heavy sleeps.

I could not see her face, only her hair, which hung all about her----" "I would know her hair," I put in.

The two men drew a step aside and whispered together.

Then Mr. Gryce came back, and, putting his mouth to my ear, asked if I had enough agility to mount the shed as Sweetwater had done.

"He says the wood is slippery, but the climb up quite practicable for an agile man.

He had no difficulty, and if you will catch hold of the window-casings as you go along----" "Let me see the place," said I. Sweetwater at once drew me down the passage into the open place in the rear.

Here wind and storm had their will again, and for a moment I could neither hear nor see anything but a vast expanse of hollow darkness, lit here and there with misty lights, and reverberating with all sorts of sounds, among which the shrieking wind wailed longest and most furiously.

"Up there!"

called a voice in my ear, and then I became aware of an arm pointing over my shoulder towards a dark incline running up over a flight of stairs, upon the lower step of which I had almost stumbled.

"That's your road.

Can you take it?"

Jamming my hat over my head, I looked up.

A lighted square met my eyes in the blank side of the wall, against which this none too desirable road, as he called it, ran up.

"The window is wide open," said I. "As you see," said he.

"I shall make a noise; he will hear me----" "He didn't hear _me_----" "That's no proof he won't hear _me_.

But I forget the gale, and that sound--what is it?"

"Tin cans rattling; loose in some gutter, I suppose----" "It is infernal."

Then with sudden resolution--a resolution I hardly understand, for I certainly did not feel called upon to risk either self-respect or safety in this cause--I cried out: "I'll try for it;

though it's long since I put my agility to the proof.

But how am I to get onto the roof?"

For reply, Sweetwater uttered a low but peculiar call, and a shadow near by became a man.

"Lend your back to this gentleman," said he; and as I took advantage of the assistance thus afforded me and worked my way up onto the ledge over his head, he softly added: "Catch hold of everything that offers, and be careful your feet don't slip.

When you're up, give one look and come down.

We will be on hand to catch you when you get to the edge of the roof."

The rain was dripping from my hat to such an extent that it nearly blinded me.

I tore it off and flung it at their feet; then I started on my perilous climb.

[Illustration: "IN TWO MINUTES I WAS UNDER THAT OPEN WINDOW"] It was a difficult one, but not so difficult as I had expected; and in two minutes I was under that open window.

A tangle of ropes struck my head--clothes-lines, I suppose.

Laying hold of them, I steadied myself before looking in.

As I did so, a consciousness of my position made the moment a bewildering one.

I thought of Hope and what her surprise would be could she see me in my present situation on the peak of this sloping roof, thirty feet above the ground.

Hope!

the word brought resolution also.

I would look in upon this man with eyes schooled to their duty, but unsharpened by hate.

If there was forbearance due him, I would try and exercise that forbearance, remembering always that he was an object of affection to the woman I loved.

Was this why I, for the first time, saw him as he may have looked to her and probably did?

He was seated in such a way that only his profile was visible beyond the casing around which I peered.

But that profile struck me forcibly, and, forgetting my errand, I allowed myself a moment's study of the face I had never rightly seen till then.

I was astonished at the result; astonished at the effect it had upon me.

Leighton Gillespie seen with his brothers was not the Leighton Gillespie I looked upon now.

Beheld thus by himself he was an impressive figure.

Lacking George's height and Alfred's regularity of feature he was apt to be regarded by superficial or prejudiced observers as the one plain man in an exceptionally handsome family.

But I saw now that this was not so.

He had attractions of his own which could bear comparison with those of most other men; and, relieved from too close comparison with these two conspicuous personalities, the traits of his dark, melancholy countenance came out, and in the regard of his sad and preoccupied eye was felt a charm which might have ripened into fascination had no dark secret beclouded their depths or interfered with the natural expression of feelings that must once have been both natural and spontaneous.

Had he been more fortunate in his tastes or more able to put restraint upon his passions, he might, with that eye and smile, have been one of those men whose influence baffles the insight of the psychologist, and from whose magnetic personality spring innumerable benefits to those of his day and generation.

All this was forcibly impressed upon me as I knelt in the pouring rain, looking in upon his face at this momentous crisis of his life, and, had I known it, of my own also.

I had feared to advance my head too far lest he should be attracted by the movement and so detect my presence at the window.

Consequently I had seen as yet nothing of Mille-fleurs, and but little of the room.

This would not do, and I was just preparing to extend my view further when the face I was watching sank forward out of sight and a groan came to my ears so thrilling and heartbroken that my own heart stopped beating in my bewilderment and surprise.

From whose lips had this expression of anguish sprung?

From hers?

It had not sounded like a woman's voice.

Could it be---- Again!

What could it--did it, mean?

Had Leighton Gillespie received some warning of the fate which at this moment hung over him, and was it his voice I heard lifted in these heartbroken accents?

I was willing to risk everything to see.

Thrusting my head forward, I looked boldly into the room, and momentary as the glance was, or seemed to be, I have never forgotten the dolorous and awe-compelling picture upon which it fell.

By the light of a guttering candle, whose blowing flame threatened every minute to go out, I saw a wretched pallet drawn up against a dirty and mouldering wall.

On this pallet lay a woman, with just a ragged counterpane covering limbs I had so lately seen moving in rhythmical measure.

Her hair--those bewildering curls, the like of which I had never before seen and would never see again, lay about her wherever those faded rags failed to reach.

It hid her arms, it framed her temples, and, flowing away, coiled in great masses over the side of that pallet and onto the floor it seemed to richen with its wealth.

But it did not hide her face.

Either she had moved or her locks had been drawn aside since Sweetwater crouched in my place, for now her features were plainly visible and in those features I had no difficulty in recognising--Mille-fleurs.

Beside her, and drawn up so close that the rich broadcloth of his sleeve brushed the foul bed and lost itself among those overflowing curls, sat Leighton Gillespie, with his head in his hands, weeping as a man weeps but once in a lifetime.

There was no mistaking that grief.

Real heart agony cannot be simulated; and, touched with awe for what I could not understand, I was about to slip away from my post, when he gave an impetuous start, roused himself, and glanced in sudden anger towards a door set in the wall directly opposite me.

Another instant he was on his feet, with his hands held out across the prostrate figure before him, in an attitude of jealous love such as I have never seen equalled.

What had he seen or heard?

The door was closed, yet he seemed to fear intrusion.

Whose?

Not mine, for his eyes did not turn towards the window, but remained fixed upon this door.

Had the sound of steps reached him from the hall?

Probably, for, as I watched the door with him, I beheld the knob turn, then the door itself open, slowly at first, then more quickly, till it suddenly fell back, disclosing the quiet form and composed countenance of the old detective I had left behind me in the dark corner of the passage at the side of the house.

At the same instant a voice whispered from over my shoulder into my ear: "Lie still; or slip silently down to the officers stationed below.

You were so long that Mr. Gryce became impatient."

Up till then I had supposed that only a moment had elapsed since I first looked in.

"I will stay," I whispered back.

I saw that Leighton was about to speak.

"Who are you?"

I heard him demand of the intruder, in a passion so great he failed to note the identity of the man he thus accosted.

"I have a right to this room.

I have paid for it--Ah!"

He had just recognised the detective.

With a quick turn he drew the coverlet over the face he seemed to guard so jealously, then with an air of command, which was at once solemn and peremptory, he pointed to the hat which naturally rested on Mr. Gryce's head, and said: "Respect for the dead!

You will uncover, Mr. Gryce."

"The dead?"

repeated the astonished detective, striding hurriedly into the room.

"The dead?

Is this girl dead?"

But his doubt, if doubt it were, disappeared before the look with which Leighton Gillespie regarded him.

"Dead!"

that gentleman declared.

Then as Mr. Gryce instinctively bared his head, this strange, this incomprehensible man advanced a step, and in tones inconceivably touching and dignified, added this short sentence: "To respect her is to respect me; this woman is my wife."

XXVIII