The Mystery of Murray Davenport Part 17

Meanwhile Larcher was treated to an odd experience. One afternoon, as he turned into the house of flats in which Edna Hill lived, he chanced to look back toward Sixth Avenue. He noticed a pleasant-looking, smooth-faced young man, very erect in carriage and trim in appearance, coming along from that thoroughfare. He recalled now that he had observed this same young man, who was a stranger to him, standing at the corner of his own street as he left his lodgings that morning; and again sauntering along behind him as he took the car to come up-town. Doubtless, thought he, the young man had caught the next car, and, by a coincidence, got off at the same street. He pa.s.sed in, and the matter dropped from his mind.

But the next day, as he was coming out of the restaurant where he usually lunched, his look met that of the same neat, braced-up young man, who was standing in the vestibule of a theatre across the way. "It seems I am haunted by this gentleman," mused Larcher, and scrutinized him rather intently. Even across the street, Larcher was impressed anew with the young man's engagingness of expression, which owed much to a whimsical, amiable look about the mouth.

Two hours later, having turned aside on Broadway to greet an acquaintance, his roving eye fell again on the spruce young man, this time in the act of stepping into a saloon which Larcher had just pa.s.sed.

"By George, this _is_ strange!" he exclaimed.

"What?" asked his acquaintance.

"That's the fifth time I've seen the same man in two days. He's just gone into that saloon."

"You're being shadowed by the police," said the other, jokingly. "What crime have you committed?"

The next afternoon, as Larcher stood on the stoop of the house in lower Fifth Avenue, and glanced idly around while waiting for an answer to his ring, he beheld the young man coming down the other side of the avenue.

"Now this is too much," said Larcher to himself, glaring across at the stranger, but instantly feeling rebuked by the innocent good humor that lurked about the stranger's mouth. As the young man came directly opposite, without having apparently noticed Larcher, the latter's attention was called away by the coming of the servant in response to the bell. He entered the house, and, as he awaited the announcement of his name to Miss Kenby, he asked himself whether this haunting of his footsteps might indeed be an intended act. "Do they think I may be in communication with Davenport? and _are_ they having me shadowed? That would be interesting." But this strange young man looked too intelligent, too refined, too superior in every way, for the trade of a shadowing detective. Besides, a "shadow" would not, as a rule, appear on three successive days in precisely the same clothes and hat.

And yet, when Larcher left the house half an hour later, whom did he see gazing at the display in a publisher's window near by, on the same side of the street, but the young man? Flaring up at this evidence to the probability that he was really being dogged, Larcher walked straight to the young man's side, and stared questioningly at the young man's reflection in the plate gla.s.s. The young man glanced around in a casual manner, as at the sudden approach of a newcomer, and then resumed his contemplation of the books in the window. The amiability of the young man's countenance, the quizzical good nature of his dimpled face, disarmed resentment. Feeling somewhat foolish, Larcher feigned an interest in the show of books for a few seconds, and then went his way, leaving the young man before the window. Larcher presently looked back; the young man was still there, still gazing at the books. Apparently he was not taking further note of Larcher's movements. This was the end of Larcher's odd experience; he did not again have reason to suppose himself followed.

The third time Larcher called to see Miss Kenby after this, he had not been seated five minutes when there came a gentle knock at the door.

Florence rose and opened it.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Kenby," said a very masculine, almost husky voice in the hall; "these are the cigars I was speaking of to your father. May I leave them?"

"Oh, come in, come in, Mr. Turl," called out Miss Kenby's father himself from the fireside.

"Thank you, no; I won't intrude."

"But you must; I want to see you," Mr. Kenby insisted, fussily getting to his feet.

Larcher asked himself where he had heard the name of Turl. Before his memory could answer, the person addressed by that name entered the room in a politely hesitating manner, bowed, and stood waiting for father and daughter to be seated. He was none other than the smooth-faced, pleasant-looking young man with the trim appearance and erect att.i.tude.

Larcher sat open-eyed and dumb.

Mr. Kenby was for not only throwing his attention entirely around the newcomer, but for snubbing Larcher utterly forthwith; seeing which, Florence took upon herself the office of introducing the two young men.

Mr. Turl, in resting his eyes on Larcher, showed no consciousness of having encountered him before. They were blue eyes, clear and soft, and with something kind and well-wis.h.i.+ng in their look. Larcher found the whole face, now that it was animated with a sense of his existence, pleasanter than ever. He found himself attracted by it; and all the more for that did he wonder at the young man's appearance in the house of his acquaintances, after those numerous appearances in his wake in the street.

Mr. Kenby now took exclusive possession of Mr. Turl, and while those two were discussing the qualities of the cigars, Larcher had an opportunity of asking Florence, quietly:

"Who is your visitor? Have you known him long?"

"Only three or four days. He is a new guest in the house. Father met him in the public drawing-room, and has taken a liking to him."

"He seems likeable. I was wondering where I'd heard the name. It's not a common name."

No, it was not common. Florence had seen it in a novel or somewhere, but had never before met anybody possessing it. She agreed that he seemed likeable,--agreed, that is to say, as far as she thought of him at all, for what was he, or any casual acquaintance, to a woman in her state of mind?

Larcher regarded him with interest. The full, clear brow, from which the hair was tightly brushed, denoted intellectual qualities, but the rest of the face--straight-bridged nose, dimpled cheeks, and quizzical mouth--meant urbanity. The warm healthy tinge of his complexion, evenly spread from brow to chin, from ear-tip to ear-tip, was that of a social rather than bookish or thoughtful person. He soon showed his civility by adroitly contriving to include Florence and Larcher in his conversation with Mr. Kenby. Talk ran along easily for half an hour upon the shop windows during the Christmas season, the new calendars, the picture exhibitions, the "art gift-books," and such topics, on all of which Mr.

Turl spoke with liveliness and taste. ("Fancy my supposing this man a detective," mused Larcher.)

"I've been looking about in the art shops and the old book stores," said Mr. Turl, "for a copy of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, as it was called. You know, of course,--engravings from the Boydell collection of Shakespearean paintings. It was convenient to have them in a volume. I'm sorry it has disappeared from the shops. I'd like very much to have another look through it."

"You can easily have that," said Larcher, who had impatiently awaited a chance to speak. "I happen to possess the book."

"Oh, indeed? I envy you. I haven't seen a copy of it in years."

"You're very welcome to see mine. I wouldn't part with it permanently, of course, but if you don't object to borrowing--"

"Oh, I wouldn't deprive you of it, even for a short time. The value of owning such a thing is to have it always by; one mayn't touch it for months, but, when the mood comes for it, there it is. I never permit anybody to lend me such things."

"Then if you deprive me of the pleasure of lending it, will you take the trouble of coming to see it?" Larcher handed him his card.

"You're very kind," replied Turl, glancing at the address. "If you're sure it won't be putting you to trouble. At what time shall I be least in your way?"

"I shall be in to-morrow afternoon,--but perhaps you're not free till evening."

"Oh, I can choose my hours; I have nothing to do to-morrow afternoon."

("Evidently a gentleman of leisure," thought Larcher.)

So it was settled that he should call about three o'clock, an appointment which Mr. Kenby, whose opinion of Larcher had not changed since their first meeting, viewed with decided lack of interest.

When Larcher left, a few minutes later, he was so far under the spell of the newcomer's amiability that he felt as if their acquaintance were considerably older than three-quarters of an hour.

Nevertheless, he kept ransacking his memory for the circ.u.mstances in which he had before heard the name of Turl. To be sure, this Turl might not be the Turl whose name he had heard; but the fact that he _had_ heard the name, and the coincidences in his observation of the man himself, made the question perpetually insistent. He sought out Barry Tompkins, and asked, "Did you ever mention to me a man named Turl?"

"Never in a state of consciousness," was Tompkins's reply; and an equally negative answer came from everybody else to whom Larcher put the query that day.

He thought of friend after friend until it came Murray Davenport's turn in his mental review. He had a momentary feeling that the search was warm here; but the feeling succ.u.mbed to the consideration that Davenport had never much to say about acquaintances. Davenport seemed to have put friends.h.i.+p behind him, unless that which existed between him and Larcher could be called friends.h.i.+p; his talk was not often of any individual person.

"Well," thought Larcher, "when Mr. Turl comes to see me, I shall find, out whether there's anybody we both know. If there is, I shall learn more of Mr. Turl. Then light may be thrown on his haunting my steps for three days, and subsequently turning up in the rooms of people I visit."

The arrival of Mr. Turl, at the appointed hour the next afternoon, instantly put to rout all doubts of his being other than he seemed. In the man's agreeable presence, Larcher felt that to imagine the coincidences anything _but_ coincidences was absurd.

The two young men were soon bending over the book of engravings, which lay on a table. Turl pointed out beauties of detail which Larcher had never observed.

"You talk like an artist," said Larcher.

"I have dabbled a little," was the reply. "I believe I can draw, when put to it."

"You ought to be put to it occasionally, then."

"I have sometimes thought of putting myself to it. Ill.u.s.trating, I mean, as a profession. One never knows when one may have to go to work for a living. If one has a start when that time comes, so much the better."

"Perhaps I might be of some service to you. I know a few editors."

"Thank you very much. You mean you would ask them to give me work to ill.u.s.trate?"

"If you wished. Or sometimes the text and ill.u.s.trations may be done first, and then submitted together. A friend of mine had some success with me that way; I wrote the stuff, he made the pictures, and the combination took its chances. We did very well. My friend was Murray Davenport, who disappeared. Perhaps you've heard of him."

"I think I read something in the papers," replied Turl. "He went to South America or somewhere, didn't he?"