_ XXXVIII
Mrs. Severance, her whole weight against the door, felt it push at her fiercely without opening, and, even in the midst of her turmoil, smiled. Mr. Severance had never been exactly what one would call an athlete--
She slackened her pressure, little by anxious little. Her hand crept down to the knob, then she jerked it sharply and stood back and Mr. Piper came stumbling into the room, a little too fast for dignity. He had to catch to her to save himself from falling but as soon as he had recovered his balance he jerked his hands away from her as if they had taken hold of something that hurt him and when he stood up she saw that his face was grey all over and that his breath came in little hard sniffs through his nose.
"Sorry, Sargent," she said easily. "I heard your key but that silly old door is sticking again. You didn't hurt yourself, did you?"
For an instant she thought that everything was going to be perfectly simple--his face had changed so, with an intensity of relief almost childish, at the sound of her accustomed voice. Then the greyness came back.
"Do you mind--introducing me--Rose--to the gentleman--you are dining with tonight?" he said with a difficulty of speech as if actual words were not things he was accustomed to using. "I merely--called--to be quite sure."
She managed to look as puzzled as possible.
"The gentleman?"
"Oh yes, the gentleman." He seemed neither to be particularly disgusted nor murderously angry--only so utterly tired in body and spirit that she thought oddly that it seemed almost as if any sudden gesture or movement might crumble him into pieces of fine grey paper at her feet.
"Oh, there isn't any use in pretending, Rose--any more. I have my information."
"Yes? From whom?"
"What on earth does it matter? Elizabeth--since you choose to know."
"Elizabeth," said Mrs. Severance softly. She could not imagine how time, even when successfully played for and gained, could help the situation very much--but that was the only thing she could think of doing, and she did it, therefore, with every trick of deliberation she knew, as if any instant saved before he went into the dining-room might bring salvation.
"Do you know, I was always a little doubtful about Elizabeth. She was a little too beautifully incurious about everything to be quite real--and a little too well satisfied with her place, even on what we paid her. But of course is she has been supplementing her salary with private-detective work for you--"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I suppose you were foolish enough to give her one of your private numbers," she said a trifle acidly. "Which will mean that you will be paying her a modest blackmail all the rest of your life, and you'll probably have to provide for her in your will. Oh, I know Elizabeth! She'll be perfectly secret--if she's paid for it--she'll never make you willing to risk the scandal by asking for more than just enough. But if this is the way you carry on all your confidential investigations, Sargent--well, it's fortunate you have large means--"
"She doesn't know who I am."
"Oh Sargent, Sargent! When all she has to do is to subscribe to 'Town and Country.' Or call up the number you gave her, some time, and ask where it is."
"There are the strictest orders about nobody but myself ever answering the telephones in my private office."
"And servants are always perfectly obedient--and there are no stupid ones--and accidents never happen. Sargent, really--"
"That doesn't matter. I didn't come here to talk about Elizabeth." "Really? I should think you might have. I could have given you all the information you required a good deal less expensively--and now, I suppose, I'll have to think up some way of getting rid of Elizabeth as well. I can't pay her off with one of my new dresses this time--"
"
Who is he? "
"Suppose we start talking about it from the beginning, Sargent--?"
"
Where is he?"
"In the dining-room, I imagine. It wouldn't be very well bred of anyone, would it, to come out and be introduced in the middle of this very loud, very vulgar quarrel that you are making with me--"
"I'm going to see."
"No, Sargent."
"Let me pass, Rose!"
"I will not. Sargent, I will not let you make an absolute fool of yourself before my friends before you give me a chance to explain--"
"I will, I tell you! I will!
Let me go!"
They were struggling undignifiedly in the center of the room, her firm strong hands tight over his wrists as he pawed at her, trying to wrench himself away. Mr. Piper was a gentleman no longer--nor a business man--nor a figure of nation-wide importance--he was only a small furious figure with a face as grey and distorted as a fighting ape's who was clutching at the woman in front of him as if he would like to tear her with his hands. A red swimming had fallen over his eyes--all he knew was that the woman-person in front of him had fooled him more bitterly and commonly than anyone had been fooled since Adam--and that if he could not get loose in some way or other from the hateful strength that was holding him, he would burst into the disgusting tears of a vicious small boy who is being firmly held down and spanked by an older girl. Grammar, manners and sense had gone from him as completely as if he had never possessed them.
"Lemme go! oh damn you, damn you--you
woman--you
devil--lemme go!"
"Be
quiet, Sargent! Oh shut up, you
fool, shut up!" A noise came from the kitchen--a noise like the sound of a man falling over boxes. Mr. Piper struggled furiously--Paris was crawling out of the window--Paris, the sleek, sly chamberer, the gay hateful cuckoo of his private nest was getting away! Mrs. Severance turned her head toward the noise a second. Mr. Piper fought like a crippled wrestler.
"Grr-ah! Ah, would you, would you?"
He had wrenched one hand free for an instant--it went to his pocket and came out of it with something that shone and was hard like a new metal toy.
"Now will you lemme go?" But Mrs. Severance tried to grab for the hand with the revolver in it instead, and succeeded only in striking the barrel a little aside. There was a noise that sounded like a cannon-cracker bursting in Mr. Piper's face--it was so near--and then he was standing up, shaking all over, but free and a man ready to explain a number of very painful things to Paris as soon as he caught him. He took one step toward the dining-room, sheer rage tugging at his body as high wind tugs at a bough. Now that woman was out of the way----
And then he saw that she was out of the way indeed. She could not have fallen without his hearing her fall--how could she?--but she was lying on the floor in a crumple of clothes and one of her arms was thrown queerly out from her side as if it did not belong to her body any longer. He stood looking at her for what seemed one long endless wave of uncounted time and that firecracker noise he had heard kept echoing and echoing through his head like the sound of loud steps along a long and empty corridor. Then he suddenly dropped the pistol and knelt clumsily beside her.
"Rose! Rose!" he started calling huskily, his hands feeling with frantic awkwardness for her pulse and her heart, as Oliver Crowe ran into the room through the curtains. _