The Deaves Affair

"By God! another snooper!" thought Evan. "This one dogged our foot-steps all the way up-town from the fruit-stand. Well, I'll give him a little run for his money."

Entering one of the big stores Evan made his purchases. He then hastened up one aisle and down another. It could have been no easy task to follow him through the crowded store, but his little grey shadow never lost the scent. In their gyrations Evan had an opportunity to get a good look at his tracker. He was not like Alfred; he had a decent look, or rather he looked neither decent nor mean, but simply watchful. An impenetrable mask was drawn over his face, out of which his eyes looked quietly, giving nothing away. In years he was no more than a lad.

"Not a very dangerous customer, anyway," thought Evan.

Issuing from the store Evan jumped on a moving bus bound up-town. He took a seat on top; the youth got in below. At Forty-Second street Evan changed to a cross-town car; his pursuer rode on the platform. At Third avenue he changed again – but without shaking the other. Half an hour later making his way through Waverly place towards Washington Square, he was well aware that the grey figure was still behind him, though pride forbade him turning his head to see.

Reaching the Square, Evan dropped on a bench and waited to see what would happen. The slender figure passed him, eyes calmly bent ahead, and sat down on a bench fifty feet farther on. Evan rose again, and retracing his steps, walked down the east side of the Square, and entering from the Fourth street corner, sat down again. Once more the youth passed him and sat down beyond. There were but few people around; it was hardly possible that he thought his movements had not been perceived by the man he was following. "As a sleuth you're an amateur," thought Evan. "You don't care whether I'm on to you or not. But I must say you have your nerve with you. I'm considerably bigger than you."

He got up and approached the other. The stripling looked straight ahead, affecting to be unconscious of his coming. Evan came to a stand before him and said abruptly:

"What's the idea, kid?"

The youth looked up startled, then quickly drew the mask over his face. "I don't understand you," he said.

"Come off," said Evan mockingly. "Do you think I'm a blind man not to notice the particular interest you are taking in my doings? What's the idea?"

The boy's eyes held to Evan's steadily; they were the eyes of a fanatic rather than a crook. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"You've been trailing me for the last two hours."

"You're mistaken. I never saw you before."

Evan laughed in exasperation. "That's childish! Do you mean to say you didn't pick me up in Troy street two hours ago, after that row with the fruit vendor?"

"I don't know where Troy street is," was the answer.

Evan changed his tactics. Dropping into the seat beside the boy he said: "Look here, I'm a regular fellow. Loosen up, kid. Give me the dope. What's it all about?"

The other was silent.

"God knows why anybody should take after me," Evan went on. "I haven't committed any crime that I know of. And I don't own a thing in the world anybody could covet. Who hired you to trail me?"

"Nobody," said the boy. "You're mistaken."

Evan began to get hot under the collar. He got up.

"By God – !" he began, clenching his fist. Then he stopped, because his anger rang false to him. In fact he couldn't work up a genuine anger against the strange-eyed boy who neither cringed before him nor defied him but simply looked.

"It would be a shame to hit you," he went on, "you're too little. But I warn you to keep away from me hereafter. The next time I stumble over you I won't be so gentle, see? You keep out of my way, that's all."

He strode off across the Square in the direction of his own place. He felt exasperated and helpless. He was clearly the injured party, yet he had come off second best in an encounter with a mere child. To make matters worse he was perfectly sure that the youth was still trotting after him like a little dog that refuses to be sent home. He would not look around to see. As he passed in the door of 45A he did look around, and there sure enough was his little sleuth across the street. Evan slammed the door and went up-stairs swearing.

The next time he had occasion to leave the house, the youth had gone. He saw him no more – that day. "Perhaps his game was to learn where I lived," thought Evan.

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW LODGER

Evan's pal Charley Straiker occupied the adjoining room on the top floor of 45A and the two pooled their household arrangements. It was Evan's week to cook the dinners, consequently when dinner was eaten his was the privilege of occupying the easy chair with the stuffing coming out and cock his feet on the cold stove while Evan washed up.

During the afternoon Evan had painted and delivered a label that had been ordered of him, and had cleaned up generally as if in preparation for a journey. But he had not yet said a word to Charley of the events of the morning. As a matter of fact Evan had a prudent tongue, which Charley most decidedly had not, and it had occurred to Evan that he had better find out where he was at, before entrusting the tale to his garrulous partner.

Evan drew at his pipe and gloomed at the wall. Now that the mild excitement induced by the morning's events was over, a heaviness had returned to his spirit. Meanwhile Charley ran on like a brook.

Charley was a lean and sprawling youth with lank blonde hair, a long nose, and an incorrigible smile that spread to the furthest confines of his face. To quote himself, he was a bum artist and a squarehead. He took people at their own valuation and was consequently a universal favourite.

"Carmen rented her back parlour this afternoon," he was saying – Carmen being their own moniker for their landlady Miss Carmelita Sisson. "To a female. What do you know about it? Carmen hates 'em round the house. Too nosey, she says. But the room's been vacant since spring, and roomers in summertime are as scarce as snowballs. So she succumbed.

"Haven't seen her yet – I mean the new roomer, but my hope and my prayer is that she's a looker. I think she is because Carmen sniffed. Does our Carmen love the beautiful of her sex? She does – not! She's a singing-teacher, Madame Squallerina, Carmen called her, with the rare wit for which she is famed. Already moved in with her piano and all. I heard her moving round, but the door was closed. I'm afraid she's not going to be sociable. Hell! the parlor floor always looks down on the attic! That's a joke in case you don't know it; parlor floor looking down on the attic!

"Wish I could think of a good excuse to knock on her door. It 'ud be a stunt, wouldn't it, to raise an alarm of fire in this old tinder-box. Say, if there's ever a fire I bags the new roomer to save – that is until I get a look at her. If it's over a hundred and fifty, I'll give the job to you, Strong-arm."

This failed to draw a smile from Evan.

"Say, you're as lively as the dressing-room of a defeated team. Wot th' hell's the matter? Come on out and see a movie. I'll blow."

"I'm off pictures," said Evan. "Go on yourself. Maybe you'll meet Squallerina on the stairs. Take her."

"You've said it," said Charley. "I'm off."

The gas made the room hot, and Evan turned it out. The instant he did so, he became aware of the moonlight outside, and he went and rested his elbows on the sill in his customary attitude.

The moon herself was behind the house, but the Square beneath his window was mantled in a tender bloom of light. As every painter knows, moonlight is most beautiful when the moon herself is out of the picture. By moonlight the dejected old trees of the Square were shapes of perfect beauty, the grass was overlaid with a delicate scarf of light; the very figures on the benches were as strangely still as if the moon had laid a spell on them.

But all this beauty only had the effect of putting an edge on Evan's dissatisfaction. The gnawing inside him was a hundred times worse by moonlight. "What's the matter with me?" he thought querulously. "I wished for something to happen. Well, something did happen, but there's no fun in it. There's no fun in anything any more. Moonlight makes me hate myself. Oh, damn moonlight anyhow! It turns a man inside out!"

He flung away from the window and planted himself in his chair with his back to it.

Presently he became aware of a sound new in that house. His door stood open for ventilation and it came floating up the old stairs. He was aware of a vague pleasure before he localised the sound. It was music; a piano – but not the usual rooming-house instrument; a piano in tune, softly played. It drew him to the door and to the banisters outside, a poignant, haunting melody rippling in a minor treble, a melody that queerly sharpened the knife that stabbed him, yet drew him on irresistibly.

He stole down the dark stairs, guiding himself with a hand on the rail, his eyes as abstracted as a sleep walker's. The sounds were issuing from the back parlour of course. The door was partly open – so she was not as unsociable as Charley had feared, or perhaps it was only that it was hot. The room was dark inside. Evan leaned against the banisters with bent head, scarcely daring to breathe for fear of breaking the lovely spell.

The music came to an end and his spirit dropped back to earth. He lingered, silently praying for it to resume and give him wings again. Instead, the door was suddenly opened wider and he saw the tenant of the room on the threshold. All he could see of her was that she was a little woman with a lot of hair. The moonlight shimmering through the edges of her hair made a halo around her head. Moonlight made two square patches on the floor of the room.

It was too late for him to escape. "I – I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I couldn't help listening."

"Oh!" she said. "Who are you?"

"Evan Weir. I live up-stairs."

"Oh!" she said again, but with a different inflection.

By her voice Evan knew she was young and adorable. It was a low-pitched voice for so little a woman, low and thrilling; a mezzo-soprano. His spirit went to meet that voice.

For a moment or two they stood silently facing each other in the dark. Evan was not conscious of any embarrassment; he was too deeply moved. His conscious self was in abeyance. Moonlight, music and woman had bewitched him. He was in the grip of forces that played on him like an instrument. But someone had to speak in the end. It was Evan.

"What was that you were playing?" he asked simply.