The Perfume of Eros: A Fifth Avenue Incident

"In that case it only shows what a simpleton you are. If I have had anything to do with her at all it was only because I couldn't have anything to do with you."

"Well, hardly in that way. But you could have asked me to marry you."

"I have since."

"Say, rather, I asked you."

"Anyway, the other evening it was settled. If now you have changed your mind – "

"Regarding you my mind will never change. I shall speak to Arthur tonight."

"What's that?" called Annandale who, from the other end of the table, had caught the mention of his name. "What's that?"

"We were talking stocks," Loftus answered. "Do you know how money was today?"

"I know it was beastly tight."

"And that seems to me," Fanny with one of her limpid smiles remarked, "such a vulgar condition for money to be in."

"Did I hear you ask," Orr inquired, "how money was today? It was sixty per cent."

"Dear me, Melanchthon," Mrs. Waldron exclaimed. "I think I must get you to speak to the Trust Company. They only give me three. A mouse could not live in New York on that."

"The time is not distant," said Orr, "when the population of New York will be exclusively composed of mice and millionaires. Nobody but plutocrats and paupers will be able to live here. Already it is little more than a sordid hell with a blue sky. I can remember – "

Orr ran on. He had the table. In the impromptu which ensued other conversation was swamped. But during it, for a second, Loftus had Fanny's hand in his. It clasped it and in clasping thrilled. It was the first time in her life that she had permitted herself – or him – such a thing. It was the last.

Sylvia, happening at the moment to turn that way, could not help seeing what was going on. She colored and looked at Annandale.

During Orr's impromptu he had been attempting with plentiful champagne to fill the hole of which he had complained.

Later, the dinner at an end, the women gone, the hole still unfilled, he called for whisky and soda and monologued plaintively on the disasters of the day. As he talked he drank. But the monologue, which was becoming tedious, Harris interrupted. Mrs. Waldron had sent in to say that she and Miss Waldron were going, and would Mr. Orr be so good as to see them home.

At this Annandale got up. With the others he made for the room beyond. There, shortly, the guests of the evening departed; husband and wife were alone.

"Do you know, Fanny, how much I have lost today?" that husband began.

"No, Arthur," that wife replied. "Nor do I know that I particularly care. There is something more important to me than money just now. I want a divorce."

"Eh?" Annandale had been walking up and down the room, but at this he stopped short. He did not seem to have heard aright. "Eh?"

"Eh?" Fanny repeated in open mimic. "Yes, I want a divorce."

"A divorce?" Munching the syllables of the word, Annandale put a hand to his shirt front. "From me?" Had Fanny asked him to make good the fifty million loss to the country which Orr had mentioned his bewilderment could not have been more sheer.

He stared at Fanny. She was nodding at him. Influenced by that motion of her head, slowly, almost laboriously, he sat down. There the disasters of the day fusing with the alcohol of the night blent with the demand and bewildered him still more.

"What an odd thing to want," he said at last. Then rallying he added, "You must be j-joking. Yes – really, for you know you can't tell me why."

To this, Fanny who had been eyeing him narrowly, retorted severely: "I wonder are you in a condition to have me tell you anything at all?"

At the imputation the poor chap, after the fashion of poor chaps in similar shape, flared indignantly. "There is nothing the matter with me," he protested. Though very much mixed, he managed for the moment not to appear so. "Nothing," he reiterated.

"Then Arthur, to be quite frank, we are not suited to each other. If you will give me a divorce it will be nice of you. If not I shall go to Dakota and get one."

Annandale passed a hand over his forehead. He did not in the least understand what all this was about. Then suddenly the fumes of wine disclosed a retrospect of incidents garnered unconsciously, memories of Fanny and Loftus, the sense of her increasing aloofness, the knowledge of his constant presence. These things made pictures which he saw and, seeing, inflamed. At once, in answer not to her but to them, he got from his seat, pounded violently on an étagère and cried with the viciousness of drink: "I'll shoot him! I'll shoot Royal Loftus for the dog that he is!"

"Beg pardon, sir." Through the lateral entrance to the drawing-room Harris emerged, a tray in his hand. "A necklace, sir. It was under the dining-room table where Miss Waldron sat, sir."

Annandale strangled an oath. He glared at Fanny, glared at the man, glared at the pearls, took the latter, thrust them in his pocket, motioned to Harris, strode from the room, went upstairs, then down and out from the house, slamming the door after him with a noise in which there was the clatter of musketry and the din of oaths.

The night was black yet full of stars, the hour homicidal and serene. Annandale strode on. Before him was the park, about it a fence of high iron and within phantasmal peace. He did not notice it. He was wondering angrily what he would do, how he should act.

Had he been sober he would have known at once. When in his sphere of life a woman wants to go, it is a man's mere duty to open the doors, open the windows, run ahead, get a divorce and bring it back to her on a salver. Had he been sober he would have realized that. He would have recognized too the propriety of Fanny's frank request. After little more than five months of marriage it was perhaps precipitate. Yet considered simply as a request it was, in the world in which he moved, more common than the reverse.

Ordinarily he would have realized that. What is more, he would have realized that what Fanny had said was true. They were not suited for each other. When people are not so suited it is best that they should separate. But people that have bowed when they met might just as well bow when they part. In the life known as polite big words and little threats have long since gone out of fashion.

All of which ordinarily Annandale would have known. He was essentially urbane, of a nature far more inclined to inaction than anger. Ordinarily, he would have accepted the situation, without joy, no doubt, but certainly without raising the roof. Whereupon, having so accepted it, he would have turned in and gone to bed.

But alcohol plays strange tricks. It affects manners and memories. It affects, too, the imagination. Annandale was drunk. The Yellow Fay that lurks in liquor awoke in him the manger dog. He told himself that he was being robbed. And of what? The wife of his bosom! And by whom? His nearest friend! The outrage and the villainy of that loomed, or rather, the Yellow Fay aiding, seemed to loom so monstrously, that, beside it, the disasters of the Street dwindled into nothing, lost in the sense of this wrong.

It was damnable, he decided.

Putting a hand in a pocket his fingers encountered a string of pearls. It was not that which he was seeking. Besides, he had forgotten them. But finding them there it occurred to him that he ought to restore them at once. Circling the park he entered Irving Place and rang at Sylvia's door.

There, instead of the usual if brief delay, the door opened at once. Orr was coming out. Beyond in the hall Sylvia stood. Orr looked at Annandale, wondering what the dickens he was after. But Annandale brushed by. Orr passed on. Annandale entered the hall.

As the door closed the light revealed to Sylvia what Orr in the semi-obscurity of the stoop had not observed and which, had he observed, would, in view of an anterior episode, have induced his return.

But Sylvia saw. In face and manner his excitement was obvious. Mindful of that episode she feared that he was again in his cups. Yet immediately, though for a moment, a question which he asked reassured her. She understood, or thought she did, why he had come.

"Did you know that you had lost your pearls?"

Instinctively the girl's hand went to her throat.

"Here they are. They were found somewhere. In the hall, I think."

"Thank you, Arthur. This is very good of you. But tomorrow would have done."

She did not ask him in and this omission he did not appear to notice. He looked about the hall and then at the girl. At the look her fear returned.

"Did you know about Fanny and Loftus?" he suddenly asked. "They're going to elope." As he spoke he leaned back heavily against the door. "I shall kill him," he added thickly.

Sylvia wrung her hands. "Oh, Arthur, you have been drinking again. You promised that you never would."

"I shall kill him," Annandale stubbornly repeated.

"Oh, don't say such things," the girl pleaded. "Don't say them. Go home."

Annandale turned sullenly, opened the door and looking back, muttered, "I have no home."

Closing the door after him he started down the steps. They were few and wide, easy of descent. But they had become unaccountably steep. He caught at a rail. It steadied him. He stood there a moment. Then, a bit uncertainly, he zigzagged on.

CHAPTER V

EXIT FANNY

"MURDER!"

On the morrow, through the thick streets newsboys were shouting the word engagingly, as though it were something nice. For further temptation they bawled, "In Gramercy Park!"

Orr was leaving his office. It was four o'clock. He was on his way home. But the name detained him. Murder in Gramercy Park was a novelty which no one aware of its sedateness could comfortably resist. He bought an extra. There, for his penny, in leaded type it stood. In ink, appropriately red, meagre details followed. As these sprang at him, mentally he bolted. Other purchasers were absorbing them pleasurably. A good old-fashioned crime is so rare! Then, too, of all crimes murder in Gramercy Park is rarest. Yet when in addition the victim is a man of fashion what more would you have for a cent?

To Orr the information was excessive. It concerned Royal Loftus, who, the paper stated, had been found early that morning, near a bench in the park, doubled in a heap, a bullet through his handsome head.

No clues, no arrests. That was all. But was it not enough? To Orr, while excessive it was also incredible. Mechanically he read the account again. On his way uptown he bought other papers, less colorful but equally clear. Loftus had been identified. There was no mistake.

But the incredibility of it persisted. A man young, rich, handsome, without apparently an enemy in the world or an idea in his head, to be done for like that was a matter which Orr could not immediately digest.

He tried, however. In the effort he reached his house. There a telephone message awaited him. It asked would he please come to Irving Place. Presumably it concerned the murder. He went at once.

In the sombre parlor Sylvia stood.

"You know, I suppose," he began. Seeing that she did he added, "It is very odd."

Sylvia interrupted him. "There is worse."

"How worse? What do you mean?"

"Fanny was going to run off with him."

"With Loftus?"

Sylvia nodded. Her face, always pale, now was white.

"But," Orr expostulated, "you don't fancy that Annandale – ?"

"No." The monosyllable fell longly from the girl. "No," she repeated. "But others may."

"I don't see why. There is nothing to go on. Is there though?"

Sylvia did not directly reply. She looked down at her hands and then at her cousin. "I think," she presently said, "that he must have learned of it last evening after we went away. At dinner I am sure he had no suspicions."

"Had you any?"

Sylvia raised her eyebrows. "I don't know," she remarked, "whether when you were going from here you noticed him particularly, but in the hall he had told her that he would shoot him."

Orr sniffed. "That is rather awkward."

"Then almost at once he went. But where?"

"Have you heard from him since?"

"No, and it is for that reason I sent for you. Won't you go to him and let me know?"

But Orr did not like the errand. It seemed to him that Annandale might be the man. "That, too, is rather awkward," he objected.

Against the objection Sylvia pleaded. Manifestly she was nervous. "If you won't go," she said at last, "I shall."

"Oh, well, if you put it in that way," Orr reluctantly replied, "I suppose I must."

"And you will come back?"

"As quickly as I can."

There is a line of Hugo descriptive of the earnestness with which people gape at a wall behind which something has occurred. Orr recalled it when he reached Gramercy Park. At one end of the park was a great crowd staring at the high fence of iron. It was behind the fence that Loftus had been found. The place itself was directly in front of Annandale's house.

On entering that house Orr was shown into the drawing-room. Shortly, from a room beyond, Annandale appeared.

"You have heard, have you not?" he asked. "But come in here."

Orr followed him to the other room. In it was a sideboard on which decanters stood.

"Will you have something?"

Orr thanked him. Annandale helped himself to a liquor. As he did so the decanter clicked against the glass and, as he raised the glass, Orr saw that his hand shook.

"It is very strange," said Annandale, repeating almost the words which Orr had used to Sylvia. "I had no cause to love the man, but – "

"I know," Orr interrupted. "My cousin told me. But if I were you I would not talk of it. She seemed worried lest you might."

Annandale put down the glass. He was quite flushed. "But," he exclaimed, "she does not suspect me!"

"Of course not. On the contrary. But then the fact suggests a motive which, coupled with any threat you may have made, might, in the absence of other clues, made a prima facie case, which to say the least, don't you see, would be nasty."

"Damnably so!" Annandale muttered dumbly. Then, raising the glass again, he threw out: "But what nonsense! A little after you had all gone from here I went to your cousin's – "

"Yes. I know you did. I met you on the stoop."

"Did you?" said Annandale with marked surprise.

"Why, yes. Don't you remember?"

Annandale passed a hand across his face and sat down.

"Don't you remember?" Orr reiterated.

Annandale shook his head.

"But you remember where you went afterward, don't you? Did you come directly here?"

Annandale made no answer.

"Can't you tell me?" Orr asked. "Or is it that you don't wish to?"

On a mantel opposite the sideboard a clock was ticking. For awhile in the room only that ticking could be heard.

"Can't you?" Orr asked again.

Annandale stood up. It was as though the question had prodded him. He moved to the sideboard. But Orr got in his way.

"Don't drink any more. Try to think."

"I can't," said Annandale. He moved back and sat down. In his face the flush had deepened. It looked mottled. He himself looked ill.

Orr, a hand extended on the sideboard, beat on it a brief tattoo.

"This is rather tedious," he said at last. "It is only a little less than a year ago that you had a similar lapse. Oddly enough, it began as this has, at my cousin's house. But we must try to keep her out of the matter. Were she asked what you said it might be embarrassing, don't you think?"

"What I said? What did I say?"

Annandale as he spoke looked so abject that Orr feared that he might go to pieces there and then. Humanely he changed the subject. "Of course, whoever did it will be nabbed. Meanwhile, it is only to prevent any stupid suspicions that I venture to advise. By the way, have you any idea who could have done it?"

Annandale again ran his hand across his eyes; then, looking up at Orr, he replied: "Not one – unless he did it himself."

"H'm. Well, yes. That might be. But what does Mrs. Annandale think?"

"She does not know. Or, at least, she did not at noon. I heard it then from Harris. I told him not to say anything to her. Shortly after, as I understood, she went out, to her mother's, I believe, though, of course, since then – "

The sentence was not completed. Fanny was entering the room. Orr had always admired her very much, but never so much as then. She was dressed in black, which is becoming to blonds, and richly dressed, he afterward thought, he could not be sure for he lacked the huckster's eye. But his admiration was not on this occasion induced by her looks, though a woman's looks, when she has any, are always notable if unnoticed factors. His admiration was caused by the way she took things.

With the air of one inquiring the time of day she glanced at Annandale and asked, almost with a lisp: "Why didn't you shoot me?"

Orr turned to Annandale. He was rising. From his face the flush had gone. He was lurid. The word lurid is used because it is more dramatic than its synonym, ghastly. And here was drama, real drama, in real life.

"Fanny, you don't think that I – "

Drama, real drama, is an enjoyable rarity. Orr longed to stay and see it out. But, obviously, anything of the kind would have been worse than indiscreet. He picked up his hat.

"Fanny," Annandale repeated, "you can't think – "

"Oh," she interrupted, "you see you made it quite unnecessary for me to think at all. You told me beforehand. Wasn't it considerate?" she added, turning to Orr.

"But I did not mean it," cried Annandale. "As God is my witness – "

"I am a witness," Fanny interjected, interrupting him again. But the interruption was effected without abruptness, without apparent emotion, sweetly, almost lispingly, with a modulation of the voice that was restful to the ear. "And," she added, in the same sugary, leisurely way, but raising now a slender finger gloved in white, "I will swear to what you said."

At this Orr swam, or tried to swim, to the rescue. "Surely," he protested, "you would not do that?"

"Wouldn't I?" she answered, addressing Orr and speaking in the same smiling, seductive fashion that she had to Annandale. "Wouldn't I, indeed! Really, believe me, you are quite in error."

Annandale fell back in the chair from which he had arisen. "Fanny," he gasped, "I did not know a woman could hate like that."

Fanny smiled afresh. "No? Is it possible? But, then, perhaps, you never knew how a woman could love."

She gave a little nod. It was as though she were adding, "Take that."

Orr was buttoning a glove, preparing to retreat. She turned to him: "Don't go. Stay and have a drink with Arthur. He looks as though he needed one."

She moved back.

"Yes, stay," she continued. "I am going." Once more the slender finger gloved in white was raised. "Arthur Annandale, never willingly will I see you again – except in court. For to court I shall go, if only to see you sentenced."

At that, at the splendid ferocity of it, Orr looked at Annandale. When he turned to look at Fanny, silently, no doubt smilingly, she had gone.

CHAPTER VI

WHAT THE PAPERS SAID

THERE are occasions when speech is an intrusion and sympathy an affront. An occasion of this kind coincided with Fanny's exit. On the mantel the clock still ticked. Otherwise there was silence in that room.

Orr, finishing with his glove, made for the door. "If I can be of use," he said, "let me know."

Annandale stood up. "You can," he answered. For a moment he hesitated. He seemed lost and dizzy. Then, with an effort, he got himself together. "Tell Sylvia it is not true."

Orr passed out. But instead of returning at once to Irving Place he went up the steps of an adjoining house. There he was told that Mrs. Loftus could see no one. He had not expected to be received. But he felt for her, felt, too, how she must feel.

That a Loftus should die would, he knew, be enough. But that a Loftus should be murdered, and that Loftus be her son, there was something which, Orr thought, might perhaps overwhelm her. And, as Orr afterward learned, Mrs. Loftus was then sitting, her attendants about her, absently and ceaselessly shaking her head. Nor did the motion of it ever cease. She was palsied.

Before Orr learned of that other things supervened, primarily fresh extras. These of course were indicated. The imagination of the public had been stirred. Of all things mystery affects the imagination most. Here was one agreeably heightened by subsequent editions announcing the projection of the eternal feminine.

Then those that read these sheets felt that they were getting their money's worth. But the feeling was accentuated when one of the papers gratified them with a picture of a girl who they saw was an exceedingly fetching young woman and who they were informed had vanished from her residence, the Arundel, where she was known as Miss Leroy.

Her connection with Loftus, a connection which the neighborhood generally understood, was shown with reportorial ease. With the same ease it was established that he had been with her the evening preceding the night of his death. Bag and baggage the next morning she had flown.

That fact in itself was prodigiously interesting. A young and pretty assassin, what! It was quite like fiction. It was almost too good or too bad to be true. Besides, the picture displayed a girl not merely pretty but quasi-ideal, a face infinitely delicate, disdainful yet sad.

Orr saw the picture and saw too that, while perhaps rather flattering, it did not resemble Marie in the least. As a matter of fact it was an art editor's fake. But that, of course, the public did not know and being fed on fakes would not have cared if it had known.

Then more mystery followed. What were her antecedents? Who were her people? Whence had she come? No one could say. What alone could be said was that a year previous Loftus had taken for her an apartment at the Arundel, where she had resided in a manner otherwise genteel, though with, latterly, but one servant, a negress named Blanche.

At the time the police were as much interested in the servant as the public in the girl. The latter in departing had had the forethought to leave the former behind, and, from her, information relevant and irrelevant was obtained.

To Mr. Peacock for instance, one of the district attorneys, Blanche related that at dinner her mistress liked sweetbreads and sorrel with, now and then, a chocolate souffle.

Mr. Peacock was a florid man with the face of a cupid, the guile of a fox and the voice of an ogre. "I don't care for that," he told her.

"Nor I," Blanche agreeably replied.

"I mean," said Mr. Peacock, "that I don't care about her victuals. She was in love with the dead man, wasn't she?"

"I guess so," Blanche with profound if unconscious psychology replied. "She was always scrapping with him. She – "

"Tell me," Peacock interrupted, "what happened the last night he was there."

"It was awful. He was trying to get rid of her. He wasn't much and I told him so, but he was all she had. When I first came to her she said she was an orphan, that she hadn't anybody anywhere, that they were all dead."

"She may have meant," Peacock with even profounder psychology interjected, "that she was dead to them."

But this insinuation Blanche resented. "She could be lively enough when she liked."

"Who came to see her?"

"Mr. L."

"No one else?"

Blanche shook her head.

"Whom did she write to?"

"How do I know?"

"Didn't you ever see her write to anyone?"

"Well, the last night, after he had gone, she did write a letter and gave it to me to post. When I came back – "

"Whom was it addressed to?"

Blanche shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know, I can't read. When I came back she was crying and getting a few duds together and I helped her."

"Did she tell you where she was going?"

"Sure. To Europe. I saw her off the next day. She went in the sewerage."

"In the steerage, do you mean?" asked Peacock. "But she hadn't any money? Didn't Loftus give her any?"

"She wouldn't take his money, she threw it back at him. She would not take anything he had given her. She left a room full of dresses and jewelry. They are at the Arundel now. She told me – "

"Did you see her on board?"

Blanche nodded.

"Mightn't she have left the ship before it sailed?"