Further Foolishness Part 2

She did not rise and "confront" me, as they always do in the snoopopathic stories. Neither did her eyes flash, nor her gown cling to her as she rose. Nor was her gown made of "rich old stuff." No, she merely went on reading her newspaper.

"I must apologise," I said. "I am a little short-sighted, and very often a _one_ and a _three_ look so alike that I can't tell them apart. I'm afraid--"

"Not at all," said the lady. "Good evening."

"You see," I added, "this room and my own being so alike, and mine being 343 and this being 341, I walked in before I realised that instead of walking into 343 I was walking into 341."

She bowed in silence, without speaking, and I felt that it was now the part of exquisite tact to retire quietly without further explanation, or at least with only a few murmured words about the possibility of to-morrow being even colder than to-day. I did so, and the affair ended with complete _savoir faire_ on both sides.

But the Snoopopaths, Man and Woman, can't do this sort of thing, or, at any rate, the snoopopathic writer won't let them. The opportunity is too good to miss. As soon as The Man comes into The Woman's room--before he knows who she is, for she has her back to him--he gets into a condition dear to all snoopopathic readers.

His veins simply "surged." His brain beat against his temples in mad pulsation. His breath "came and went in quick, short pants." (This last might perhaps be done by one of the hotel bellboys, but otherwise it is hard to imagine.)

And The Woman--"Noiseless as his step had been, she seemed to _sense_ his presence. A wave seemed to sweep over her --She turned and rose fronting him full." This doesn't mean that he was full when she fronted him. Her gown--but we know about that already. "It was a coward's trick,"

she panted.

Now if The Man had had the kind of _savoir faire_ that I have, he would have said: "Oh, pardon me! I see this room is 341. My own room is 343, and to me a _one_ and a _three_ often look so alike that I seem to have walked into 341 while looking for 343." And he could have explained in two words that he had no idea that she was in New York, was not following her, and not proposing to interfere with her in any way. And she would have explained also in two sentences why and how she came to be there.

But this wouldn't do. Instead of it, The Man and The Woman go through the grand snoopopathic scene which is so intense that it needs what is really a new kind of language to convey it.

"Helene," he croaked, reaching out his arms--his voice tensed with the infinity of his desire.

"Back," she iced. And then, "Why have you come here?"

she hoa.r.s.ed. "What business have you here?"

"None," he glooped, "none. I have no business." They stood sensing one another.

"I thought you were in Philadelphia," she said--her gown clinging to every fibre of her as she spoke.

"I was," he wheezed.

"And you left it?" she sharped, her voice tense.

"I left it," he said, his voice glumping as he spoke.

"Need I tell you why?" He had come nearer to her. She could hear his pants as he moved.

"No, no," she gurgled. "You left it. It is enough. I can understand"--she looked bravely up at him--"I can understand any man leaving it."

Then as he moved still nearer her, there was the sound of a sudden swift step in the corridor. The door opened and there stood before them The Other Man, the Husband of The Woman--Edward Dangerfield.

This, of course, is the grand snoopopathic climax, when the author gets all three of them--The Man, The Woman, and The Woman's Husband--in an hotel room at night. But notice what happens.

He stood in the opening of the doorway looking at them, a slight smile upon his lips.

"Well?" he said. Then he entered the room and stood for a moment quietly looking into The Man's face.

"So," he said, "it was you." He walked into the room and laid the light coat that he had been carrying over his arm upon the table. He drew a cigar-case from his waistcoat pocket.

"Try one of these Havanas," he said.

Observe the _calm_ of it. This is what the snoopopath loves--no rage, no bl.u.s.tering--calmness, cynicism. He walked over towards the mantelpiece and laid his hat upon it. He set his boot upon the fender.

"It was cold this evening," he said. He walked over to the window and gazed a moment into the dark.

"This is a nice hotel," he said. (This scene is what the author and the reader love; they hate to let it go. They'd willingly keep the man walking up and down for hours saying "Well!")

The Man raised his head! "Yes, it's a good hotel," he said. Then he let his head fall again.

This kind of thing goes on until, if possible, the reader is persuaded into thinking that there is nothing going to happen. Then:

"He turned to The Woman. 'Go in there,' he said, pointing to the bedroom door. Mechanically she obeyed." This, by the way, is the first intimation that the reader has that the room in which they were sitting was not a bedroom.

The two men were alone. Dangerfield walked over to the chair where he had thrown his coat.

"I bought this coat in St. Louis last fall," he said.

His voice was quiet, even pa.s.sionless. Then from the pocket of the coat he took a revolver and laid it on the table. Marsden watched him without a word.

"Do you see this pistol?" said Dangerfield.

Marsden raised his head a moment and let it sink.

Of course the ignorant reader keeps wondering why he doesn't explain. But how can he? What is there to say?

He has been found out of his own room at night. The penalty for this in all the snoopopathic stories is death.

It is understood that in all the New York hotels the night porters shoot a certain number of men in the corridors every night.

"When we married," said Dangerfield, glancing at the closed door as he spoke, "I bought this and the mate to it--for her--just the same, with the monogram on the b.u.t.t--see! And I said to her, 'If things ever go wrong between you and me, there is always this way out.'"

He lifted the pistol from the table, examining its mechanism. He rose and walked across the room till he stood with his back against the door, the pistol in his hand, its barrel pointing straight at Marsden's heart.

Marsden never moved. Then as the two men faced one another thus, looking into one another's eyes, their ears caught a sound from behind the closed door of the inner room--a sharp, hard, metallic sound as if some one in the room within had raised the hammer of a pistol--a jewelled pistol like the one in Dangerfield's hand.

And then--

A loud report, and with a cry, the cry of a woman, one shrill despairing cry--

Or no, hang it--I can't consent to end up a story in that fas.h.i.+on, with the dead woman p.r.o.ne across the bed, the smoking pistol, with a jewel on the hilt, still clasped in her hand--the red blood welling over the white laces of her gown--while the two men gaze down upon her cold face with horror in their eyes. Not a bit. Let's end it like this:

"A shrill despairing cry--'Ed! Charlie! Come in here quick! Hurry! The steam coil has blown out a plug! You two boys quit talking and come in here, for heaven's sake, and fix it.'" And, indeed, if the reader will look back he will see there is nothing in the dialogue to preclude it. He was misled, that's all. I merely said that Mrs. Dangerfield had left her husband a few days before. So she had--to do some shopping in New York. She thought it mean of him to follow her. And I never said that Mrs. Dangerfield had any connection whatever with The Woman with whom Marsden was in love. Not at all. He knew her, of course, because he came from Brick City.

But she had thought he was in Philadelphia, and naturally she was surprised to see him back in New York. That's why she exclaimed "Back!" And as a matter of plain fact, you can't pick up a revolver without its pointing somewhere.

No one said he meant to fire it.

In fact, if the reader will glance back at the dialogue--I know he has no time to, but if he does--he will see that, being something of a snoopopath himself, he has invented the whole story.

III. Foreign Fiction in Imported Instalments.

Serge the Superman: A Russian Novel

(Translated, with a hand pump, out of the original Russian)