第88章 CHAPTER XIII(1)

Once more Janet and Mr. Tiernan descended into the subway, taking a car going to the south and west, which finally came out of the tunnel into a broad avenue lined with shabby shops, hotels and saloons, and long rows of boarding--and rooming-houses. They alighted at a certain corner, walked a little way along a street unkempt and dreary, Mr. Tiernan scrutinizing the numbers until he paused in front of a house with a basement kitchen and snow-covered, sandstone steps. Climbing these, he pulled the bell, and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed vestibule until presently shuffling steps were heard within; the door was cautiously opened, not more than a foot, but enough to reveal a woman in a loose wrapper, with an untidy mass of bleached hair and a puffy face like a fungus grown in darkness.

"I want to see Miss Lise Bumpus," Mr. Tiernan demanded.

"You've got the wrong place. There ain't no one of that name here," said the woman.

"There ain't! All right," he insisted aggressively, pushing open the door in spite of her. "If you don't let this young lady see her quick, there's trouble coming to you."

"Who are you?" asked the woman, impudently, yet showing signs of fear.

"Never mind who I am," Mr. Tiernan declared. "I know all about you, and I know all about Duval. If you don't want any trouble you won't make any, and you'll take this young lady to her sister. I'll wait here for you, Miss Janet," he added.

"I don't know nothing about her--she rented my room that's all I know," the woman replied sullenly. "If you mean that couple that came here yesterday--"

She turned and led the way upstairs, mounting slowly, and Janet followed, nauseated and almost overcome by the foul odours of dead cigarette smoke which, mingling with the smell of cooking cabbage rising from below, seemed the very essence and reek of hitherto unimagined evil. A terror seized her such as she had never known before, an almost overwhelming impulse to turn and regain the air and sunlight of the day. In the dark hallway of the second story the woman knocked at the door of a front room.

"She's in there, unless she's gone out." And indeed a voice was heard petulantly demanding what was wanted--Lise's voice! Janet hesitated, her hand on the knob, her body fallen against the panels. Then, as she pushed open the door, the smell of cigarette smoke grew stronger, and she found herself in a large bedroom, the details of which were instantly photographed on her mind--the dingy claret-red walls, the crayon over the mantel of a buxom lady in a decollete costume of the '90's, the outspread fan concealing the fireplace, the soiled lace curtains. The bed was unmade, and on the table beside two empty beer bottles and glasses and the remains of a box of candy--suggestive of a Sunday purchase at a drug store--she recognized Lise's vanity case. The effect of all this, integrated at a glance, was a paralyzing horror. Janet could not speak.

She remained gazing at Lise, who paid no attention to her entrance, but stood with her back turned before an old-fashioned bureau with a marble top and raised sides. She was dressed, and engaged in adjusting her hat.

It was not until Janet pronounced her name that she turned swiftly.

"You!" she exclaimed. "What the--what brought you here?"

"Oh, Lise!" Janet repeated.

"How did you get here?" Lise demanded, coming toward her. "Who told you where I was? What business have you got sleuthing 'round after me like this?"

For a moment Janet was speechless once more, astounded that Lise could preserve her effrontery in such an atmosphere, could be insensible to the evils lurking in this house--evils so real to Janet that she seemed actually to feel them brushing against her.

"Lise, come away from here," she pleaded, "come home with me!"

"Home!" said Lise, defiantly, and laughed. "What do you take me for?

Why would I be going home when I've been trying to break away for two years? I ain't so dippy as that--not me! Go home like a good little girl and march back to the Bagatelle and ask 'em to give me another show standing behind a counter all day. Nix! No home sweet home for me! I'm all for easy street when it comes to a home like that."

Heartless, terrific as the repudiation was, it struck a self-convicting, almost sympathetic note in Janet. She herself had revolted against the monotony and sordidness of that existence She herself ! She dared not complete the thought, now.

"But this!" she exclaimed.

"What's the matter with it?" Lise demanded. "It ain't Commonwealth Avenue, but it's got Fillmore Street beat a mile. There ain't no whistles hereto get you out of bed at six a.m., for one thing. There ain't no geezers, like Walters, to nag you 'round all day long. What's the matter with it?"

Something in Lise's voice roused Janet's spirit to battle.

"What's the matter with it?" she cried. "It's hell--that's the matter with it. Can't you see it? Can't you feel it? You don't know what it means, or you'd come home with me."

"I guess I know what it means as well as you do," said Lise, sullenly.

"We've all got to croak sometime, and I'd rather croak this way than be smothered up in Hampton. I'll get a run for my money, anyway."

"No, you don't know what it means," Janet repeated, "or you wouldn't talk like that. Do you think this man will support you, stick to you? He won't, he'll desert you, and you'll have to go on the streets."

A dangerous light grew in Lise's eyes.

"He's as good as any other man, he's as good as Ditmar," she said.

"They're all the same, to girls like us."