The Luminous Face

Before the inevitable question could be put another man joined the group.

“Hello, folks,” said Robert Gleason, as he sat down; “hope I don’t intrude – and all that. What you talking about?”

“Murder,” said Barry. “Murder as a Fine Art, you know.”

“Don’t like the subject. Let’s change it. Talk about the ladies, or something pleasant, you know. Eh?”

“Or Shakespeare and the musical glasses,” said Pollard.

“No musical glasses, nowadays,” bewailed Gleason. “No more clink the canakin, clink. It’s drink to me only with thine eyes. Hence, the preponderance of women and song in our lives, since the third of the trio is gone.”

Gleason was the sort of Westerner usually described as breezy. He was on intimate terms with everybody, whether everybody reciprocated or not. Not a large man, not a young man, he possessed a restless vitality, a wiry energy that gave him an effect of youth. About forty, he was nearer the age of Doctor Davenport than the others, who were all in their earliest thirties.

Nobody liked Gleason much, yet no one really disliked him. He was a bit forward, a little intrusive, but it was clear to be seen that those mannerisms were due to ignorance and not to any intent to be objectionable. He was put up at the Club by a friend, and had never really overstepped his privileges, though it was observable that his ways were not club ways.

“Yep, the Ladies – God bless ’em!” he went on. “What could be a better subject for gentlemen’s discussion? No personalities, of course; that goes without saying.”

“Then why say it?” murmured Pollard, without looking at the speaker.

“That’s so! Why, indeed?” was the genial response. “Now, you know, out in Seattle, where I hail from, there’s more – oh, what do you call it, sociability like, among men. I go into a club there and everybody sings out something gay; I come in here, and you all shut up like clams.”

“You objected to the subject we were discussing,” began Monroe, indignantly, but Barry interrupted, with a wave of his hand, “The effete East, my dear Gleason. Doubtless you’ve heard that expression? Yes, you would. Well, it’s our renowned effeteness that prevents our falling on your neck more effusively.”

“Guying me?” asked Gleason, with a quiet smile. “You see, boys, before I went to Seattle, I was born in New England. I can take a little chaff.”

“You’re going to tell us of your ancestry?” said Pollard, and though his words were polite his tone held a trace of sarcastic intent.

Gleason turned a sudden look on him.

“I might, if you really want me to,” he said, slowly. “I might give you the story of my life from my infancy, spent in Coggs’ Hollow, New Hampshire, to the present day, when I may call myself one of the leading citizens of Seattle, Wash.”

“What or whom do you lead?” asked Pollard, and again the only trace of unpleasantness was a slight inflection in his really fine voice.

“I lead the procession,” and Gleason smiled, as one who positively refuses to take offense whether meant or not. “But, I can tell you I don’t lead it here in New York! Your pace is rather swift for me! I’m having a good time and all that, but soon, it’s me for the wildness and woolliness of the good old West again! Why, looky here, I’m living in a hole in the wall – yes, sir, a hole in the wall!”

“I like that!” laughed Doctor Davenport. “Why, man, you’re in that apartment of McIlvaine’s – one of the best put-ups in town.”

“Yes, so Mac said,” Gleason exploded. “Why, out home, we’d call that a coop. But what could I do? This old town of yours, spilling over full, couldn’t fix me out at any hotel, so when my friend offered his palatial home, I took it – and – ”

“You’d be surprised at the result!” Barry broke in. “That’s because you’re a Western millionaire, Mr Gleason. Now we poor, struggling young artists think that apartment you’re in, one of the finest diggings around Washington Square.”

“But, man, there’s no service!” Gleason went on, complainingly. “Not even a hall porter! Nobody to announce a caller!”

“Well, you have that more efficient service, the – ”

“Yes! the contraption that lets a caller push a button and have the door open in his face!”

“Isn’t that just what he wants?” said Barry, laughing outright at Gleason’s disgusted look. “Then, you see, Friend Caller walks upstairs, and there you are!”

“Yes, walks upstairs. Not even an elevator!”

“But your friends don’t need one,” expostulated Davenport. “You’re only one flight up. You don’t seem to realize how lucky you are to get that place, in these days of housing problems!”

“Oh, well, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but it will serve,” said Gleason, with one of his sudden, pleasant smiles.

“I see your point, though, Mr Gleason,” said Dean Monroe. “And if I were a plutocrat from Seattle, sojourning in this busy mart, I confess I, too, should like a little more of the dazzling light in my halls than you get down there. I know the place, used to go there to see McIlvaine. And while it’s a decent size, and jolly well furnished, I can see how you’d prefer more gilt on your ginger bread.”

“I do, and I’d have it, too, if I were staying here much longer. But I’m going to settle up things soon now, and go back to home, sweet home.”

“How did you, a New Englander, chance to make Seattle your home?” asked Monroe, always of a curious bent.

“Had a chance to go out there and get rich. You see, Coggs’ Hollow, as one might gather from its name, was a small hamlet. I lived there till I was twenty-five, then, getting a chance to go West and blow up with the country, I did. Glad of it, too. Now, I’m going back there, and – I hope to take with me a specimen of your fair feminine. Yes, sir, I hope and expect to take along, under my wing, one of these little moppy-haired, brief-skirted lassies, that will grace my Seattle home something fine!”

“Does she know it yet?” drawled Barry and Gleason stared at him.

“She isn’t quite sure of it, but I am!” he returned with a comical air of determination.

“You know her pretty well, then,” chaffed Barry.

“You bet I do! I ought to. She’s my sister’s stepdaughter.”

“Phyllis Lindsay!” cried Barry, involuntarily speaking the name.

“The same,” said Gleason, smiling; “and as I’m due there for dinner, I’ll be toddling now to make myself fine for the event.”

With a general beaming smile of good nature that included all the group, Gleason went away.

For a few moments no one spoke, and then Monroe began, “As I was saying, there are only three motives for murder – and I stick to that. But you were about to say, Pollard – ?”

“I was about to say that you have omitted the most frequent and most impelling motive. It doesn’t always result in the fatal stroke, but as a motive, it can’t be beat.”

“Go on – what is it?”

“Just plain dislike.”

“Oh, hate,” said Monroe.

“Not at all. Hate implies a reason, a grievance. But I mean an ineradicable, and unreasonable dislike – why, simply a case of:

‘I do not like you, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know and know full well,
I do not like you, Doctor Fell.’

One Tom Brown wrote that, and it’s a bit of truth, all right!”

“One Martial said it before your friend Brown,” informed Doctor Davenport. “He wrote: