The Brass Bowl by Louis Joseph Vance

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Quaintly, with the effect of a picture cast by a cinematograph in a
darkened auditorium, there leaped upon Maitland's field of vision the
picture of Anisty standing at bay, face drawn and tense, lips curled back,
eyes lurid with defiance and despair. He stood, poised upon the balls of
his feet, like a cat ready to spring, in the doorway between the inner and
outer offices. He raised his hand with an indescribably swift and vicious
gesture, and a flame seemed to blaze out from his finger-tips.

At the same instant Hickey's weapon spat by Maitland's cheek; the young
man felt the hot furnace breath of it.

The burglar reeled as though from a tremendous blow. His inflamed features
were suddenly whitened, and his right arm dropped limply from the
shoulder, revolver falling from fingers involuntarily relaxing.

Hickey covered him. "Surrender!" he roared. And fired again. For Anisty
had gone to his knees, reaching for the revolver with his uninjured arm.

The detective's second bullet winged through the doorway, over Anisty's
head, and bit through the outer window. As Anisty, with a tremendous
strain upon his failing powers, struggled to his feet, Maitland, catching
the murderous gleam in the man's eye, pulled trigger. The burglar's
answering shot expended itself as harmlessly as Maitland's. Both went wide
of their marks.

And of a sudden Hickey had drawn the bolt, and the body of police behind
forced Maitland pell-mell into the room. As he recovered he saw Hickey
hurling himself at the criminal's throat--one second too late. True to his
pledge never to be taken alive, Anisty had sent his last bullet crashing
through his own skull.

A cry of horror and consternation forced itself from Maitland's throat.
The police halted, each where he stood, transfixed. Anisty drew himself
up, with a trace of pride in his pose; smiled horribly; put a hand
mechanically to his lips....

And died.

Hickey caught him as he fell, but Maitland, unheeding, leaped over the
body that had in life resembled him so fatally, and entered Bannerman's
private office.

The grey girl lay at length in a corner of the room, shielded from
observation by one of the desks. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks wore the
hue of death; the fair young head was pillowed on one white and rounded
forearm, in an attitude of natural rest, and the burnished hair, its heavy
coils slipping from their fastenings, tumbled over her head and shoulders
in shimmering glory, like a splash of living flame.

With a low and bitter cry the young man dropped to his knees by her side.
In the outer office the police were assembled in excited conclave, blind
to all save the momentous fact of Anisty's last, supremely consistent act.
For the time Maitland was utterly alone with his great and aching
loneliness.

After a little while timidly he touched her hand. It lay upturned, white
slender fingers like exotic petals curling in upon the rosy hollow of her
palm. And it was soft and warm.

He lifted it tenderly in both his own, and so held it for a space,
brooding, marveling at its perfection. And inevitably he bent and touched
it with his lips, as if their ardent contact would warm it to
sentience....

The fingers tightened upon his own, slowly, surely; and in the blinding
joy of that moment he was made conscious of the ineffable sweetness of
opening, wondering eyes.

XVI

RECESSIONAL

"_Hm, hrumm!_" Thus Hickey, the inopportunely ubiquitous, lumbering
hastily in from the other office and checking, in an extreme of
embarrassment, in the middle of the floor.

Maitland glanced over his shoulder, and, subduing a desire to flay the man
alive, released the girl's hand.

"I say, Hickey," he observed, carefully suppressing every vestige of
emotion, "will you lend me a hand here? Bring a chair, please, and a glass
of water."

The detective stumbled over his feet and brought the chair at the risk of
his neck. Then he went away and returned with the water. In the meantime
the girl, silently enough for all that her eyes were speaking, with
Maitland's assistance arose and seated herself.

"You will have to stay here a few minutes," he told her, "until--er--"

"I understand," she told him in a choking tone.

Hickey awkwardly handed her the glass. She sipped mechanically.

"I have a cab below," continued Maitland. "And I'll try to arrange it so
that we can get out of the building without having to force a way through
the crowd."

She thanked him with a glance.

"There's th' freight elevator," suggested Hickey helpfully.

"Thank you.... Is there anything I can do for you, anything you wish?"
continued Maitland to the girl, standing between her and the detective.

She lifted her face to his and shook her head, very gently. "No," she
breathed through trembling lips.

"You--you've been--" But there was a sob in her throat, and she hung her
head again.

"Not a word," ordered Maitland. "Sit here for a few minutes, if you can,
drink the water and--ah--fix up your hat, you know," (damn Hickey! Why the
devil did the fellow insist on hanging round so!) "and I will go and make
arrangements."

"Th-thank you," whispered the small voice shakily.

Maitland hesitated a moment, then turned upon Hickey in sudden
exasperation. His manner was enough; even the obtuse detective could not
ignore it. Maitland had no need to speak.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said, standing his ground manfully but with a trace
more of respect in his manner than had theretofore characterized it, "but
there's uh gentleman--uh--your fren' Bannerman's outside 'nd wants tuh
speak tuh yeh."

"Tell him to--"

"Excuse _me_. He says he's gottuh see yeh. If yeh don't come out,
he'll come after yeh. I thought yeh'd ruther--"

"That's kindly thought of," Maitland relented. "I'll be there in a
minute," he added meaningly.

Hickey took an impassive face to the doorway, where, whether or not with
design, he stood precisely upon the threshold, filling it with his burly
shoulders. Maitland bent again over the girl, and took her hand.

"Dearest," he said gently, "please don't run away from me again."

Her eyes were brimming, and he read his answer in them. Quickly--it was no
time to harry her emotions further; but so much he had felt he must say--.
he brushed her hand with his lips and joined Hickey. Thrusting the
detective gently into the outer room, with a not unfriendly hand upon his
shoulder, Maitland closed the door.

"Now, see here," he said quietly and firmly, "you must help me arrange to
get this lady away without her becoming identified with the case, Hickey.
I'm in a position to say a good word for you in the right place; she had
positively nothing to do with Anisty," (this, so far as he could tell, was
as black a lie as he had ever manufactured under the lash of necessity),
"and--there's a wad in it for the boys who help me out."

"Well...." The detective shifted from one foot to the other, eying him
intently. "I guess we can fix it,--freight elevator 'nd side entrance. Yeh
have the cab waitin', 'nd--"

"I'll go with the lady, you understand, and assume all responsibility. You
can come round at your convenience and arrange the details with me, at my
rooms, since you will be so kind."

"I dunno." Hickey licked his lips, watching with a somber eye the
preparations being made for the removal of Anisty's body. "I'd 've give a
farm if I could've caught that son of a gun alive!" he added at apparent
random, and vindictively. "All right. Yeh be responsible for th' lady, if
she's wanted, will yeh?"

"Positively."

"I gottuh have her name 'nd add-ress."

"Is that essential?"

"Sure. Gottuh protect myself 'n case anythin' turns up. Yeh oughttuh know
that."

"I--don't want it to come out," Maitland hesitated, trying to invent a
plausible lie.

"Well, any one can see how you feel about it."

Maitland drew a long breath and anticipated rashly. "It's Mrs. Maitland,"
he told the man with a tremor.

Hickey nodded, unimpressed. "Uh-huh. I knowed that all along," he replied.
"But seein' as yeh didn't want it talked about...." And, apparently
heedless of Maitland's startled and suspicious stare: "If yeh're goin' to
see yer fren', yeh better get a wiggle on. He won't last long."

"Who? Bannerman? What the deuce do you mean?"

"He's the feller I plugged in the elevator, that's all. Put a hole through
his lungs. They took him into an office on the twenty-first floor, right
opp'site the shaft."

"But what in Heaven's name has he to do with this ghastly mess?"

Hickey turned a shrewd eye upon Maitland. "I guess he can tell yeh
better'n me."

With a smothered exclamation, Maitland hurried away, still incredulous and
impressed with a belief, firmer with every minute, that the wounded man
had been wrongly identified.

He found him as Hickey had said he would, sobbing out his life, supine
upon the couch of an office which the janitor had opened to afford him a
place to die in. Maitland had to force a way through a crowded doorway,
where the night-watchman was holding forth in aggrieved incoherence on the
cruel treatment he had suffered at the hands of the lawbreakers. A phrase
came to Maitland's ears as he shouldered through the group.

"....grabbed me an' trun me outer the cage, inter the hall, an' then
the shootin' begins, an' I jumps down-stairs t' the sixteent' floor...."

Bannerman opened dull eyes as Maitland entered, and smiled faintly.

"Ah-h, Maitland," he gasped; "thought you'd ... come."

Racked with sorrow, nothing guessing of the career that had brought the
lawyer to this pass, Maitland slipped into a chair by the head of the
couch and closed his hand over Bannerman's chubby, icy fingers.

"Poor, poor old chap!" he said brokenly. "How in Heaven--"

But at Bannerman's look the words died on his lips. The lawyer moved
restlessly. "Don't pity me," he said in a low tone. "This is what I might
have ... expected, I suppose ... man of Anisty's stamp ... desperate
character ... it's all right, Dan, my just due...."

"I don't understand, of course," faltered Maitland.

Bannerman lay still a moment, then continued: "I know you don't. That's
why I sent for you.... 'Member that night at the Primordial? When the
deuce was it? I ... can't think straight long at a time.... That night I
dined with you and touched you up about the jewels? We had a bully salad,
you know, and I spoke about the Graeme affair...."

"Yes, yes."

"Well ... I've been up to that game for years. I'd find out where the
plunder was, and ... Anisty always divided square.... I used to advise
him.... Of course you won't understand,--you've never wanted for a dollar
in your life...."

Maitland said nothing. But his hand remained upon the dying man's.

"This would never have happened if ... Anisty hadn't been impatient. He was
hard to handle, sometimes. I wasn't sure, you know, about the jewels; I
only said I thought they were at Greenfields. Then I undertook to find out
from you, but he was restive, and without saying anything to me went down
to Greenfields on his own hook--just to have a look around, he said. And
so ... so the fat was in the fire."

"Don't talk any more, Bannerman," Maitland tried to soothe him. "You'll
pull through this all right, and--You need never have gone to such
lengths. If you'd come to me--"'

The ghost of a sardonic smile flitted, incongruously, across the dying
man's waxen, cherubic features.

"Oh, hell," he said; "you wouldn't understand. Perhaps you weren't born
with the right crook in your nature,--or the wrong one. Perhaps it's
because you can't see the fun in playing the game. It's that that counts."

He compressed his lips, and after a moment spoke again. "You never did
have the true sportsman's love of the game for its own sake. You're like
most of the rest of the crowd--content with mighty cheap virtue, Dan.... I
don't know that I'd choose just this kind of a wind-up, but it's been fun
while it lasted. Good-by, old man."

He did not speak again, but lay with closed eyes.

Five minutes later Maitland rose and unclasped the cold fingers from about
his own. With a heavy sigh he turned away.

At the door Hickey was awaiting him. "Yer lady," he said, as soon as they
had drawn apart from the crowd, "is waitin' for yeh in the cab
down-stairs. She was gettin' a bit highsteerical 'nd I thought I'd better
get her away.... Oh, she's waitin' all right!" he added, alarmed by
Maitland's expression.

But Maitland had left him abruptly; and now, as he ran down flight after
echoing flight of marble stairs, there rested cold fear in his heart. In
the room he had just quitted, a man whom he had called friend and looked
upon with affectionate regard, had died a self-confessed and unrepentant
liar and thief.

If now he were to find the girl another time vanished,--if this had been
but a ruse of hers finally to elude him,--if all men were without honor,
all women faithless,--if he had indeed placed the love of his life, the
only love that he had ever known, unworthily,--if she cared so little who
had seemed to care much....

XVII

CONFESSIONAL

I

But the cab was there; and within it the girl was waiting for him.

The driver, after taking up his fare, had at her direction drawn over to
the further curb, out of the fringe of the rabble which besieged the St.
Luke Building in constantly growing numbers, and through which Maitland,
too impatient to think of leaving by the basement exit, had elbowed and
fought his way in an agony of apprehension that brooked no hindrance,
heeded no difficulty.

He dashed round the corner, stopped short with a sinking heart, then as
the cabby's signaling whip across the street caught his eye, fairly hurled
himself to the other curb, pausing at the wheel, breathless, lifted out of
himself with joy to find her faithful in this ultimate instance.

She was recovering, whose high spirit and recuperative powers were to him
then and always remained a marvelous thing; and she was bending forth from
the body of the hansom to welcome him with a smile that in a twinkling
made radiant the world to him who stood in a gloomy side street of New
York at three o'clock of a summer's morning,--a good hour and a half
before the dawn. For up there in the tower of the sky-scraper he had as
much as told her of his love; and she had waited; and now--and now he had
been blind indeed had he failed to read the promise in her eyes. Weary she
was and spent and overwrought; but there is no tonic in all the world like
the consciousness that where one has placed one's love, there love has
burgeoned in response. And despite all that she had suffered and endured,
the happiness that ran like soft fire in her Veins, wrapping her being
with its beneficent rapture, had deepened the color in her cheeks and
heightened the glamour in her eyes.

And he stood and stared, knowing that in all time to no man had ever woman
seemed more lovely than this girl to him: a knowledge that robbed his mind
of all other thought and his tongue of words, so that to her fell the task
of rousing him.

"Please," she said gently--"please tell the cabby to take me home, Mr.
Maitland."

He came to and in confusion stammered: Yes, he would. And he climbed up on
the step with no other thought than to seat himself at her side and drive
away for ever. But this time the cabby brought him to his senses, forcing
him to remember that some measure of coherence was demanded even of a man
in love.

"Where to, sir?"

"Eh, what? Oh!" And bending to the girl: "Home, you said--?"

She told him the address,--a number on Park Avenue, above Thirty-fourth
Street, below Forty-second. He repeated it mechanically, unaware that it
would remain stamped for ever on his memory, indelibly,--the first
personal detail that she had granted him: the first barrier down.

He sat down. The cab began to move, and halted again. A face appeared at
the apron,--Hickey's, red and moon-like and not lacking in complacency:
for the man counted of profiting variously by this night's work.

"Excuse me, Mr. Maitland, 'nd"--touching the rim of his derby--"yeh, too,
ma'am, f'r buttin' in--"

"Hickey!" demanded Maitland suddenly, in a tone of smoldering wrath, "what
the--what do you want?"

"Yeh told me tuh call round to-morrow, yeh know. When'll yeh be in?"

"I'll leave a note for you with O'Hagan. Is that all?"

"Yep--that is, there's somethin' else...."

"Well?"

"Excuse me for mentionin' it, but I didn't know--it ain't generally known,
yeh know, 'nd one uh th' boys might've heard me speak tuh yer lady by name
'nd might pass it on to a reporter. What I mean's this," hastily, as the
Maitland temper showed dangerous indications of going into active
eruption: "I s'pose yeh don't want me tuh mention't yeh're married, jes'
yet? Mrs. Maitland here," with a nod to her, "didn't seem tuh take kindly
tuh the notion of it's bein' known--"

"Hickey!"

"Ah, excuse _me!_"

"Drive on, cabby--instantly! Do you hear?"

Hickey backed suddenly away and the cab sprang into motion; while Maitland
with a face of fire sat back and raged and wondered.

Across Broadway toward Fourth Avenue dashed the hansom; and from the
curb-line Hickey watched it with a humorous light in his dull eyes.
Indeed, the detective seemed in extraordinary conceit with himself. He
chewed with unaccustomed emotion upon his cold cigar, scratched his cheek,
and chuckled; and, chuckling, pulled his hat well down over his brows,
thrust both hands into his trousers pockets, and shambled back to the St.
Luke Building--his heavy body vibrating amazingly with his secret mirth.

And so, shuffling sluggishly, he merges into the shadows, into the mob
that surges about the building, and passes from these pages.

II

In the clattering hansom, steadying herself with a hand against the
window-frame, to keep from being thrown against the speechless man beside
her, the girl waited. And since Maitland in confusion at the moment found
no words, from this eloquent silence she drew an inference unjustified,
such as lovers are prone to draw, the world over, and one that lent a
pathetic color to her thoughts, and chilled a little her mood. She had
been too sure....

But better to have it over with at once, rather than permit it to remain
for ever a wall of constraint between them. He must not be permitted to
think that she would dream of taking him upon his generous word.

"It was very kind of you," she said in a steady, small voice, "to pretend
that we--what you did pretend, in order to save me from being held as a
witness. At least, I presume that is why you did it? "--with a note of
uncertainty.

"It is unnecessary that you should be drawn into the affair," he replied,
with some resumption of his self-possession. "It isn't as if you were--"

"A thief?" she supplied as he hesitated.

"A thief," he assented gravely.

"But I--I am," with a break in her voice.

"But you are not," he asserted almost fiercely. And, "Dear," he said
boldly, "don't you suppose I _know?_"

"I ... what do you know?"

"That you brought back the jewels, for one minor thing. I found them
almost as soon as you had left. And then I knew ... knew that you cared
enough to get them from this fellow Anisty and bring them back to me, knew
that I cared enough to search the world from end to end until I found you,
that you might wear them--if you would."

But she had drawn away, had averted her face; and he might not see it; and
she shivered slightly, staring out of the window at the passing lights. He
saw, and perforce paused.

"You--you don't understand," she told him in a rush. "You give me credit
beyond my due. I didn't break into your flat again, to-night, in order to
return the jewels--at least, not for that alone."

"But you did bring back the jewels?"

She nodded.

"Then doesn't that prove what I claim, prove that you've cleared
yourself--?"

"No," she told him firmly, with the firmness of despair; "it does not.
Because I did not come for that only. I came with another purpose,--to
steal, as well as to make restitution. And I ... I stole."

There was a moment's silence, on his part incredulous. "I don't know what
you mean. What did you steal? Where is it?"

"I have lost it--"

"Was it in your hand-bag?"

"You found that?"

"You dropped it in the trunk-closet. I found it there. There is something
of mine in it?"

Dumb with misery, she nodded; and after a little, "You didn't look, of
course."

"I had no right," he said shortly.

"Other men wo-would have thought they had the right. I th-think you had,
the circumstances considered. At all events," steadying her voice, "I say
you have, now. I give you that right. Please go and investigate that
hand-bag, Mr. Maitland. I wish you to."

He turned and stared at her curiously. "I don't know what to think," he
said. "I can not believe--"

"You mu-must believe. I have no right to profit by your disbelief.... Dear
Mr. Maitland, you have been kind to me, very kind to me; do me this last
kindness, if you will."

The young face turned to him was gravely and perilously sweet; very nearly
he forgot all else. But that she would not have.

"Do this for me.... What you will find will explain everything. You will
understand. Perhaps"--timidly--"perhaps you may even find it in your heart
to forgive, when you understand.... If you should, my card-case is in the
bag, and ...." She faltered, biting her lip cruelly to steady a voice
quivering with restrained sobs. "Please, please go at once, and--and see
for yourself!" she implored him passionately.

Of a sudden he found himself resolved. Indeed, he fancied that it were
dangerous to oppose her; she was overwrought, on the verge of losing her
command of self. She wished this thing, and though with all his soul he
hated it, he would do as she desired.

"Very well," he assented quietly. "Shall I stop the cab now?"

"Please."

He tapped on the roof of the hansom and told the cabby to draw in at the
next corner. Thus he was put down not far from his home,--below the
Thirty-third Street grade.

Neither spoke as he alighted, and she believed that he was leaving her in
displeasure and abhorrence; but he had only stepped behind the cab for a
moment to speak to the driver. In a moment he was back, standing by the
step with one hand on the apron and staring in very earnestly and soberly
at the shadowed sweetness of her pallid face, that gleamed in the gloom
there like some pale, shy, sad flower.

Could there be evil combined with such sheer loveliness, with features
that in every line bodied forth the purity of the spirit that abode
within? In the soul of him he could not believe that a thief's nature fed
canker-like at the heart of a woman so divinely, naively dear and
desirable. And ... he would not.

"Won't you let me go?"

"Just a minute. I ... I should like to.... If I find that you have done
nothing so very dreadful." he laughed uneasily, "do you wish to know?"

"You know I do." She could not help saying that, letting him see that far
into her heart. "You spoke of my calling, I believe. That means to-morrow
afternoon, at the earliest. May I not call you up on the telephone?"

"The number is in the book," she said in a tremulous voice.

"And your name in the card-case?"

"Yes."

"And if I should call in half an hour--?"

"O, I shall not sleep until I know!... Good night!"

"Good night!... Drive on, cabby."

He stood, smiling queerly, until the hansom, climbing the Park Avenue
hill, vanished over its shoulder. Then swung about and with an eager step
retraced his way to his rooms, very confident that God was in His Heaven
and all well with the world.

III

The cab stopped. The girl rose and descended to the walk. The driver
touched his hat and reined the horse away. "Goodnight, ma'am," he bade her
cheerfully. And she told him "Good night" in her turn.

For a moment she seemed a bit hesitant and fearful, left thus alone. The
house in front of which she stood, like its neighbors, reared a high
façade to the tender, star-lit sky, its windows, with drawn shades and no
lights, wearing a singular look of blind patience. It had a high stoop and
a sunken area. There was a dull glow in one of the basement windows.

It was very late,--or extremely early. The moon was down, though its place
was in some way filled by the golden disk of the clock in the Grand
Central Station's tower. The air was impregnated with the sweet and
fragrant breath of the new-born day. In the tunnel beneath the street a
trolley-car rumbled and whined and clanked lonesomely. A stray cat
wandered out of a cross-street with the air of a seasoned debauchee;
stopped, scratched itself with inimitable abandon, and suddenly,
mysteriously alarmed at nothing, turned itself into a streak of shadow
that fled across the street and vanished. And, as if affected by its
terror, the grey girl slipped silently into the area and tapped at the
lighted window.

Almost immediately the gate was cautiously opened. A woman's head looked
out, with suspicion. "Oh, thank Heavens!" it said with abrupt fervor. "I
was afraid it mightn't be you, Miss Sylvia. I'm so glad you're back. There
ain't--hasn't been a minute these past two nights that I haven't been in a
fidget."

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