Part 14 (2/2)
”I understand--and I'm sorry,” said Whitaker, swallowing his chagrin.
”And I am further instructed to ask if you will be good enough to leave your address.”
”Certainly: I'm stopping at the Ritz-Carlton; but”--he demurred--”I should like to leave a note, if I may--?”
Mrs. Secretan nodded an a.s.sent. ”You will find materials in the desk there,” she added, indicating an escritoire.
Thanking her, Whitaker sat down, and, after some hesitation, wrote a few lines:
”Please don't think I mean to cause you the slightest inconvenience or distress. I shall be glad to further your wishes in any way you may care to designate. Please believe in my sincere regret....”
Signing and folding this, he rose and delivered it to Mrs. Secretan.
”Thank you,” he said with a ceremonious bow.
The customary civilities were scrupulously observed.
He found himself in the street, with his trouble for all reward for his pains. He wondered what to do, where to go, next. There was in his mind a nagging thought that he ought to do something or other, somehow or other, to find Drummond and make him understand that he, Whitaker, had no desire or inclination to stand in his light; only, let the thing be consummated decently, as privately as possible, with due deference to the law....
The driver of the taxicab was holding the door for him, head bent to catch the address of the next stop. But his fare lingered still in doubt.
Dimly he became aware of the violent bawlings of a brace of news-vendors who were ramping through the street, one on either sidewalk. Beyond two words which seemed to be intended for ”extra” and ”tragedy” their cries were as inarticulate as they were deafening.
At the spur of a vague impulse, bred of an incredulous wonder if the papers were already noising abroad the news of the fiasco at the Theatre Max, Whitaker stopped one of the men and purchased a paper. It was delivered into his hands roughly folded so that a section of the front page which blazed with crimson ink was uppermost--and indicated, moreover, by a ridiculously dirty thumb.
”Ther'y'are, sir. 'Orrible moider.... Thanky....”
The man galloped on, howling. But Whitaker stood with his gaze riveted in horror. The news item so pointedly offered to his attention was clearly legible in the light of the cab lamps.
LATEST EXTRA
TRAGIC SUICIDE IN HARLEM RIVER
Stopping his automobile in the middle of Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge at 7.30 P.M., Carter S. Drummond, the lawyer and fiance of Sara Law the actress, threw himself to his death in the Harlem River. The body has not as yet been recovered.
VIII
A HISTORY
Whitaker returned at once to the Theatre Max, but only to find the front of the house dark, Forty-sixth Street gradually rea.s.suming its normal nocturnal aspect.
At the stage-door he discovered that no one knew what had become of the manager. He might possibly be at home.... It appeared that Max occupied exclusive quarters especially designed for him in the theatre building itself: an amiable idiosyncrasy not wholly lacking in advertising value, if one chose to consider it in that light.
His body-servant, a prematurely sour j.a.panese, suggested grudgingly that his employer might not improbably be found at Rector's or Louis Martin's. But he wasn't; not by Whitaker, at least.
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