—Trains again!
It passed, faded, trembled delicately away into securities of eternal stone, and left behind the blue dome of night, and of October. The smile came back into her eyes. The brief and troubled frown had lifted. Her look as she turned and started towards the living-room was almost dulcet and cherubic—the look of a good child who ends the great adventure of another day.
Edith and Alma had retired immediately on coming in, and Lily Mandell, who had gone into one of the bedrooms to get her wraps, now came out wearing her splendid cape.
“Darling, it has been too marvellous,” she said throatily, wearily, giving Mrs. Jack an affectionate kiss. “Fire, smoke, Piggy Logan, everything—I’ve simply adored it!”
Mrs. Jack shook with laughter.
“Your parties are too wonderful!” Miss Mandell concluded. “You never know what’s going to happen next!”
With that she said her good-byes and left.
George was also going now, but Mrs. Jack took him by the hand and said coaxingly:
“Don’t go yet. Stay a few minutes and talk to me.”
Mr. Jack was obviously ready for his bed. He kissed his wife lightly on the cheek, said good night casually to George, and went to his room. Young men could come, and young men could go, but Mr. Jack was going to get his sleep.
Outside, the night was growing colder, with a suggestion of frost in the air. The mammoth city lay fathoms deep in sleep. The streets were deserted, save for an occasional taxi-cab that drilled past on some urgent nocturnal quest. The pavements were vacant and echoed hollowly to the footfalls of a solitary man who turned the corner into Park and headed briskly north towards home and bed. The lights were out in all the towering office buildings, except for a single window high up in the face of a darkened cliff which betrayed the presence of some faithful slave of business who was working through the night upon a dull report that had to be ready in the morning.
At the side entrance of the great apartment house, on the now empty cross street, one of the dark green ambulances of the police department had slid up very quietly and was waiting with a softly throbbing motor. No one was watching it.
Shortly a door which led down to a basement opened. Two policemen came out, bearing a stretcher, which had something sheeted on it that was very still. They slid this carefully away into the back of the green ambulance.
A minute later the basement door opened again and a sergeant emerged. He was followed by two more men in uniform who carried a second stretcher with a similar burden. This, too, was carefully disposed of in the same way.
The doors of the vehicle dicked shut. The driver and another man walked round and got into the front seat. And after a hushed word or two with the sergeant, they drove off quietly, turning the corner with a subdued clangour of bells.
The three remaining officers spoke together for a moment longer in lowered voices, and one of them wrote down notes in his little book. Then they said good night, saluted, and departed, each walking off in a different direction to take up again his appointed round of duty.
Meanwhile, inside the imposing front entrance, under a light within the cloistered walk, another policeman was conferring with the doorman, Henry. The doorman answered the questions of the officer in a toneless, monosyllabic, sullen voice, and the policeman wrote down the answers in another little book.
“You say the younger one was unmarried?”
“Yes.”
“How old?”
“Twenty-five.”
“And where did he live?”
“In the Bronx.”
His tone was so low and sullen that it was hardly more than a mutter, and the policeman lifted his head from the book and rasped out harshly:
“Where?”
“The Bronx!” said Henry furiously.
The man finished writing in his book, put it away into his pocket, then in a tone of casual speculation he said:
“Well, I wouldn’t want to live up there, would you? It’s too damn far away.”
“Nah!” snapped Henry. Then, turning impatiently away, he began: “If that’s all you want----”
“That’s all,” the policeman cut in with brutal and ironic geniality. “That’s all, brother.”
And with a hard look of mirth in his cold eyes, he swung his nightstick behind him and watched the retreating figure of the doorman as it went inside and disappeared in the direction of the elevator.
*
Up in the Jack’s living-room, George and Esther were alone together. There was now an air of finality about everything. The party was over, the fire was over, all the other guests had gone.