The Voice in the Fog by Harold MacGrath

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THE VOICE IN THE FOG

by

HAROLD MACGRATH

Author of
The Man on the Box, Hearts and Masks,
The Million Dollar Mystery, etc.

With Illustrations by A. B. Wenzell

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

1915

[Frontispiece: Kitty Killigrew]

TO

CAV. GIOVANNI PICCININI

IN MEMORY OF MANY HAPPY FLORENTINE DAYS

THE VOICE IN THE FOG

CHAPTER I

Fog.

A London fog, solid, substantial, yellow as an old dog's tooth or a
jaundiced eye. You could not look through it, nor yet gaze up and down
it, nor over it; and you only thought you saw it. The eye became
impotent, untrustworthy; all senses lay fallow except that of touch;
the skin alone conveyed to you with promptness and no incertitude that
this thing had substance. You could feel it; you could open and shut
your hands and sense it on your palms, and it penetrated your clothes
and beaded your spectacles and rings and bracelets and shoe-buckles.
It was nightmare, bereft of its pillows, grown somnambulistic; and
London became the antechamber to Hades, lackeyed by idle dreams and
peopled by mistakes.

There is something about this species of fog unlike any other in the
world. It sticks. You will find certain English cousins of yours, as
far away from London as Hong-Kong, who are still wrapt up snugly in it.
Happy he afflicted with strabismus, for only he can see his nose before
his face. In the daytime you become a fish, to wriggle over the
ocean's floor amid strange flora and fauna, such as ash-cans and
lamp-posts and venders' carts and cab-horses and sandwich-men. But at
night you are neither fish, bird nor beast.

The night was May thirteenth; never mind the year; the date should
suffice: and a Walpurgis night, if you please, without any Mendelssohn
to interpret it.

That happy line of Milton's--"Pandemonium, the high capital of Satan
and his peers"--fell upon London like Elijah's mantle. Confusion and
his cohort of synonyms (why not?) raged up and down thoroughfare and
side-street and alley, east and west, danced before palace and tenement
alike: all to the vast amusement of the gods, to the mild annoyance of
the half-gods (in Mayfair), and to the complete rout of all mortals
a-foot or a-cab. Imagine: militant suffragettes trying to set fire to
the prime minister's mansion, _Siegfried_ being sung at the opera, and
a yellow London fog!

The press about Covent Garden was a mathematical problem over which
Euclid would have shed bitter tears and hastily retired to his arbors
and citron tables. Thirty years previous (to the thirteenth of May,
not Euclid) some benighted beggar invented the Chinese puzzle; and
tonight, many a frantic policeman would have preferred it, sitting with
the scullery maid and the pantry near by. Simple matter to shift about
little blocks of wood with the tip of one's finger; but cabs and
carriages and automobiles, each driver anxious to get out ahead of his
neighbor!--not to mention the shouting and the din and discord of horns
and whistles and sirens and rumbling engines!

"It's hard luck," said Crawford, sympathetically. "It will be half an
hour before they get this tangle straightened out."

"I shouldn't mind, Jim, if it weren't for Kitty," replied his wife. "I
am worried about her."

"Well, I simply could not drag her into this coupe and get into hers
myself. She's a heady little lady, if you want to know. As it is,
she'll get back to the hotel quicker than we shall. Her cab is five
up. If you wish, I'll take a look in and see if she's all right."

"Please do;" and she smiled at him, lovely, enchanting.

"You're the most beautiful woman in all this world!"

"Am I?"

Click! The light went out. There was a smothered laugh; and when the
light flared up again, the aigrette in her copper-beech hair was all
askew.

"If anybody saw us!"--secretly pleased and delighted, as any woman
would have been who possessed a husband who was her lover all his
waking hours.

"What! in this fog? And a lot I'd care if they did. Now, don't stir
till I come back; and above all, keep the light on."

"And hurry right back; I'm getting lonesome already."

He stepped out of the coupe. Harlequin, and Colombine, and
Humpty-Dumpty; shapes which came out of nowhere and instantly vanished
into nothing, for all the world like the absurd pantomimes of his
boyhood days. He kept close to the curb, scrutinizing the numbers as
he went along. Never had he seen such a fog. Two paces away from the
curb a headlight became an effulgence. Indeed, there were a thousand
lights jammed in the street, and the fog above absorbed the radiance,
giving the scene a touch of Brocken. All that was needed was a witch
on a broomstick. He counted five vehicles, and stopped. The
door-window was down.

"Miss Killigrew?" he said.

"Yes. Is anything wrong?"

"No. Just wanted to see if you were all right. Better let me take
your place and you ride with Mrs. Crawford."

"Good of you; but you've had enough trouble. I shall stay right here."

"Where's your light?"

"The globe is broken. I'd rather be in the dark. Its fun to look
about. I never saw anything to equal it."

"Not very cheerful. We'll be held up at least half an hour. You are
not afraid?"

"What, I?" She laughed. "Why should I be afraid? The wait will not
matter. But the truth is, I'm worried about mother. She would go to
that suffragette meeting; and I understand they have tried to burn up
the prime minister's house."

"Fine chance! But don't you worry. Your mother's a sensible woman.
She'll get back to the hotel, if she isn't there already."

"I wish she had not gone. Father will be tearing his hair and twigging
the whole Savoy force by the ears."

Crawford smiled. Readily enough he could conjure up the picture of Mr.
Killigrew, short, thick-set, energetic, raging back and forth in the
lobby, offering to buy taxicabs outright, the hotel, and finally the
city of London itself; typically money-mad American that he was.
Crawford wanted to laugh, but he compromised by saying: "He must be
very careful of that hair of his; he hasn't much left."

"And he pulls out a good deal of it on my account. Poor dad! Why in
the world should I marry a title?"

"Why, indeed!"

"Mrs. Crawford was beautiful tonight. There wasn't a beauty at the
opera to compare with her. Royalties are frumps, aren't they? And
that ruby! I don't see how she dares wear it!"

"I am not particularly fond of it; but it's a fad of hers. She likes
to wear it on state occasions. I have often wondered if it is really
the Nana Sahib's ruby, as her uncle claimed. Driver, the Savoy, and
remember it carefully; the Savoy."

"Yes, sir; I understand, sir. But we'll all be some time, sir.
Collision forward is what holds us, sir."

Alone again, Kitty Killigrew leaned back, thinking of the man who had
just left her and of his beautiful wife. If only she might some day
have a romance like theirs! Presently she peered out of the
off-window. A brood of _Siegfried_-dragons prowled about, now going
forward a little, now swerving, now pausing; lurid eyes and threatening
growls.

Once upon a time, in her pigtail days, when her father was going to be
rich and was only half-way between the beginning and the end of his
ambition, Kitty had gone to a tent-circus. Among other things she had
looked wonderingly into the dim, blurry glass-tank of the "human fish,"
who was at that moment busy selling photographs of himself. To-night,
in searching for comparisons, this old forgotten picture recurred to
her mind; blithely memory brought it forth and threw it upon the
screen. All London had become a glass-tank, filled with human
pollywogs.

She did not want to marry a title; she did not want to marry money; she
did not want to marry at all. Poor kindly dad, who believed that she
could be made happy only by marrying a title. As if she was not as
happy now as she was ever destined to be!

Voices. Two men were speaking near the curb-door. She turned her head
involuntarily in this direction. There were no lights in the frontage
before which stood her cab, which intervened between the Brocken haze
in the street, throwing a square of Stygian shadow against the fog,
with right and left angles of aureola. She could distinguish no shapes.

"Cheer up, old top; you're in hard luck."

"I'm a bally ass."

"No, no; only a ripping good sporty game all the way through."

Oddly enough, Kitty sensed the irony. She wondered if the speaker's
companion did.

"Well, a wager's a wager."

"And you're the last chap to welch a square bet. What's the odds? My
word, I didn't urge you to change the stakes."

"Didn't you?"

The voice was young and pleasant; and Kitty was sure that the owner's
face was even as pleasant as his voice. What had he wagered and lost?

"If you're really hard pressed. . . ."

"Hard pressed! Man, I've nothing in God's world but two guineas, six."

"Oh, I say now!"

"Its the truth."

"If a fiver will help you. . . ."

"Thanks. A wager's a wager. I've lost. I was a bally fool to play
cards. Deserve what I got. Six months; that's the agreement. A
madman's wager; but I'll stick."

"Six months; twelve o'clock, midnight, November thirteenth. It's the
date, old boy; that's what hoodooed you, as the Americans say."

Kitty wasn't sure that the speaker was English; if he was, he had lost
the insular significance of his vowels. Still, it was, in its way, as
pleasant a voice as the other's. There was no doubt about the younger
man; he was English to the core, English in his love of chance, English
in his loyalty to his word; stupidly English. That he was the younger
was a trifling matter to deduce: no young man ever led his elder into
mischief, harmful or innocuous.

"Six months. It's a joke, my boy; a great big laugh for you and me,
when there's nothing left in life but toddies and churchwardens. Six
months."

"I dare say I can hang on till that time is over. Well, good night!
No letters, no addresses."

"Exact terms. Six months from date I'll be cooling my heels in your
ante-room."

"Cavenaugh, if it's anything else except a joke. . . ."

"Oh, rot! It was your suggestion. I tell you, it's a lark, nothing
more. A gentleman's word."

"I'll start for my diggings."

"Ride home with me; my cab's here somewhere."

"No, thanks. I've got a little thinking to do and prefer to be alone.
Good night."

"And good luck go with you. Deuce take it, if you feel so badly. . . ."

There was no reply; and Kitty decided that the younger man had gone on.
Silence; or rather, she no longer heard the speakers. Then a low
chuckle came to her and this chuckle broadened into ironic laughter;
and she knew that Mephisto was abroad. What had been the wager; and
what was the meaning of the six months? It is instinctive in woman to
interpret the human voice correctly, especially when the eyes are not
distracted by physical presentations. This man outside, whoever and
whatever he was, deep in her heart Kitty knew that he was not going to
play fair. What a disappointing world it was!--to set these human
voices ringing in her ears, and then to take them out of her life
forever!

Still the din of horns and whistles and sirens, still the shouting.
Would they never move on? She was hungry. She wanted to get back to
the hotel, to learn what had happened to her mother. Militant
suffragettes, indeed! A pack of mad witches, who left their brooms
behind kitchen doors when they ought to be wielding them about dusty
corners. Woman never won anything by using brickbats and torches:
which proved on the face of it that these militants were inefficient,
irresponsible, and unlearned in history. Poor simpletons! Had not
theirs always been the power behind the throne? What more did they
want?

Her cogitations were peculiarly interrupted. The door opened, and a
man plumped down beside her.

"Enid, it looks as if we'd never get out of this hole. Have you got
your collar up?"

Numb and terrified, Kitty felt the man's hands fumbling about her neck.

"Where's your sable stole? You women beat the very devil for
thoughtlessness. A quid to a farthing, you've left it in the box, and
I'll have to go back for it, providing they'll let me in. And it's
midnight, if a minute."

Pressing herself tightly into her corner, Kitty managed to gasp: "My
name is not Enid, sir. You have mistaken your carriage."

"What? Good heavens!" Almost instantly a match sparkled and flared.
His eyes, screened behind his hand, palm outward (a perfectly natural
action, yet nicely calculated), beheld a pretty, charming face, large
Irish blue eyes (a bit startled at this moment), and a head of hair as
shiny-black as polished Chinese blackwood. The match, still burning,
curved like a falling star through the window. "A thousand pardons,
madam! Very stupid of me. Quite evident that I am lost. I beg your
pardon again, and hope I have not annoyed you."

He was gone before she could form any retort. Where had she heard that
voice before? With a little shudder--due to the thought of those cold
strange fingers feeling about her throat--her hands went up. Instantly
she cried aloud in dismay. Her sapphires! They had vanished!

CHAPTER II

Daniel Killigrew, of Killigrew and Company (sugar, coffee and spices),
was in a towering rage; at least, he towered one inch above his normal
height, which was five feet six. Like an animal recently taken in
captivity he trotted back and forth through the corridors, in and out
of the office, to and from the several entrances, blowing the while
like a grampus. All he could get out of these infernally stupid beings
was "Really, sir!" He couldn't get a cab, he couldn't get a motor, he
couldn't get anything. Manager, head-clerk, porter, doorman and page,
he told them, one and all, what a dotty old spoof of a country they
lived in; that they were all dead-alive persons, fit to be neither
under nor above earth; that they wouldn't be one-two in a race with
January molasses--"Treacle, I believe you call it here!" And what did
they say to this scathing arraignment? Yes, what did they say?
"Really, sir!" He knew and hoped it would happen: if ever Germany
started war, it would be over before these Britishers made up their
minds that there was a war. A hundred years ago they had beaten
Napoleon (with the assistance of Spain, Austria, Germany and Russia),
and were now resting.

Quarter to one, and neither wife nor daughter; outside there, somewhere
in the fog; and he could not go to them. It was maddening. Molly
might be arrested and Kitty lost. Served him right; he should have put
his foot down. The idea of Molly being allowed to go with those
rattle-pated women! Suffragettes! A "Bah!" exploded with a loud
report. Hereafter he would show who voted in the Killigrew family.
Poor man! He was made of that unhappy mental timber which agrees
thoughtlessly to a proposition for the sake of peace and then regrets
it in the name of war. His wife and daughter twisted him round their
little fingers and then hunted cover when he found out what they had
done.

He went out again to the main entrance and smoked himself headachy. He
hated London. He had always hated it in theory, now he hated it in
fact. He hated tea, buttered muffins, marmalade, jam, toast, cricket,
box hedges three hundred years old, ruins, and the checkless baggage
system, the wet blankets called newspapers. All the racial hatred of
his forebears (Tipperary born) surged hot and wrathful in his veins.
At the drop of a hat he would have gone to war, individually, with all
England. "Really, sir!" Nothing but that, when he was dying of
anxiety!

A taxicab drew up before the canopy. He knew it was a taxicab because
he could hear the sound of the panting engine. The curb-end of the
canopy was curtained by the abominable fog. Mistily a forlorn figure
emerged. The doorman started leisurely toward this figure. Killigrew
pushed him aside violently. Molly, with her hat gone, her hair awry,
her dress torn, her gloves ragged, her eyes puffed! He sprang toward
her, filled with Berserker rage. Who had dared.

"Give the man five pounds," she whispered. "I promised it."

"Five. . . ."

"Give it to him! Good heavens, do I look as if I were joking? Pay
him, pay him!"

Killigrew counted out five sovereigns, perhaps six, he was not sure.
The chauffeur swooped them up, and set off.

"Molly Killigrew. . . ."

"Not a word till I get to the rooms. Hurry! Daniel, if you say
anything I shall fall down!"

He led her to the lift. Curious glances followed, but these signified
nothing. On a night such as this was there would be any number of
accidents. Once in the living-room of the luxurious suite, Mrs.
Killigrew staggered over to the divan and tumbled down upon it. She
began to cry hysterically.

"Molly, old girl! Molly!" He put his arm tenderly across her heaving
shoulders and kneeled. His old girl! Love crowded out all other
thoughts. Money-mad he might be, but he never forgot that Molly had
once fried his meat and peeled his potatoes and darned his socks.
"Molly, what has happened? Who did this? Tell me, and I'll kill him!"

"Dan, when they started up the street for the prime minister's house, I
could not get out of the crowd. I was afraid to. It was so foggy you
had to follow the torches. I did not know what they were about till
the police rushed us. One grabbed me, but I got away." All this
between sobs. "Dan, I don't want to be a suffragette." Sob. "I don't
want to vote." Sob.

And for the first time that night Killigrew smiled.

"Where's Kitty?"

He started to his feet. "She hasn't got back from the opera yet.
She'll be the death of me, one of these fine days. You know her. Like
as not she's stepped out of her cab to see what's going on, and has
lost herself."

"But the Crawfords were with her."

"Would that make any difference with Kitty if she wanted to get out? I
told her not to wear any jewels, but she wouldn't mind me. She never
does. I haven't any authority except in my offices. You and
Kitty. . . ."

"Don't scold!"

"All right; I won't. But, all the same, you and the girl need
checking."

"Daniel, it was only because I wanted something to occupy myself with.
It's no fun for me to sit still in my house and watch everybody else
work. The butler orders the meals, the housekeeper takes charge of the
linen, the footman the carriages. Why, I can't find a button to sew on
anything any more. I only wanted something to do."

Killigrew did not smile this time. Here was the whole matter in a
nutshell: she wanted something to do. And there were thousands of
others just like her. Man-like, he forgot that women needed something
more than money and attention from an army of servants. He had his
offices, his stock-ticker, his warfare. Not because she wanted to
vote, but because she wanted and needed something to do.

"Molly, old girl, I begin to see. I'm going to finance a home-bureau
of charity. I mean it. Fifty thousand the year to do with as you
like. No hospitals, churches, heathen; but the needy and deserving
near by. You can send boys to college and girls to schools; and
Kitty'll be glad to be your lieutenant. I never had a college
education. Not that I ever needed it,"--with sudden truculence in his
tone. "But it might be a good thing for some of the rising generations
in my tenements. I'll leave the choice to you. And when it comes to
voting, why, tell me which way to vote, and I'll do it. I'll be a bull
moose, if you say so."

"You're the kindest man in the world, Dan, and I'm an old fool of a
woman!"

Kitty burst into the room, star-eyed, pale. "Mother!" She sped to her
mother's side. "Oh, I felt it in my bones that something was going to
happen!"

"Think of it, Kitty dear; your mother, fighting with a policeman! Oh,
it was frightful!"

"Never mind, mumsy," Kitty soothed. She rang for the maid, a thing her
father had not thought to do. And when her mother was snug in bed, her
head in cooling bandages, her face and hands bathed in refreshing
cologne, Kitty returned to her father, "Dad, you mustn't say a word to
mother about it, but I've been robbed."

"What?"

"My necklace. And I could not identify the thief if he stood before me
this very minute. The interior light was out of order. He entered,
pretending he had made a mistake. He called me Enid and told me to put
up my collar; touched my neck with his hands. I was so astonished that
I could not move. Finally I managed to explain that he had made a
mistake. He apologized and got out; and it is quite evident that the
necklace went with him."

"Can't you remember the least thing about him?"

"Nothing, absolutely nothing."

"Where were the Crawfords?"

"I did not wait to see them. My cab was ahead of theirs. What shall
we do?"

"Notify the police; it's all we can do. They cost me an even ten
thousand, Kitty. And I told you not to wear them on a night like this.
I'm discouraged. I want to get out of this blasted country. I'm
hoodooed." Killigrew walked the floor. He took out a cigar, eyed it
thoughtfully, and returned it to his pocket. "Because they happen to
be born in this smoke, they think the way they do things is the last
word on the subject. I'd like to show them."

"Dad,"--with a bit of a smile,--"I know what the trouble is. You want
to go home."

"And that's the truth. This is the first trip abroad I ever took with
you and your mother, and it's going to be the last. I can't live out
of my element, which is hurry and bustle and getting things done
quickly. I'm a fish out of water. I want to go home; I want to see
the Giants wallop the Cubs; and I want my two-weeks' bass fishing. But
I'll hang on till the end of June as I promised. Ten thousand in
sapphires you couldn't match in a hundred years, and Molly coming in
banged up like a prize-fighter! . . . Someone at the door."

It proved to be Crawford.

"Glad you got back safely," he said relievedly.

"Had her necklace stolen," replied Killigrew briefly.

"You don't mean to say. . . ."

Kitty recounted her amazing adventure.

"And my wife's ruby is gone." Crawford made the disclosure simply. He
was a quiet man; he had learned the futility of gestures, of wasting
words in lamentation.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Kitty.

"The windows of the cab were down. I stood outside, smoking to pass
the time. Suddenly I heard Mrs. Crawford cry out. A hand had reached
in from the off side, clutched the pendant, twisted it off, and was
gone. All quicker than I can tell it. I tried to give chase, but it
was utter folly. I couldn't see anything two feet away. Mrs. Crawford
is a bit knocked up over it. Rather sinister stone, if its history is
a true one: the Nana Sahib's ruby, you know. For the jewel itself I
don't care. I never liked to see her wear it."

Killigrew threw up his hands. "And this is the London you've been
bragging about to me! How much was the ruby worth?"

"Don't know; nobody does. It's one of those jewels you can't set a
price on. He will not be able to dispose of it in its present shape.
He'll break it up and sell the pieces, and that's the shame of it.
Think of the infernal cleverness of the man! Two or three hundred
vehicles stalled in the street, fog so thick you couldn't see your hand
before your face. Simple game for a man with ready wit. And the
police busy at the two ends of the block, trying to straighten out the
tangle. Mrs. Crawford says that the hand was white, slender and well
kept. It came in swiftly and accurately. The man had been watching
and waiting. She was so unprepared for the act that she didn't even
try to catch the hand. I have notified Scotland Yard. But you can't
hunt down a hand. I'm willing to wager that we'll neither of us ever
see the gems again."

"He must have come directly from your carriage to mine," said Kitty.
"I am heart-broken."

"One of the tricks of fate. Glad you got back all right. We were
mightily worried. Come over across the hall at nine to-morrow, all of
you, for breakfast. Don't fuss up. And we'll talk over the affair and
plan what's to be done. Good night."

"I like that young man," declared Killigrew emphatically. "He's the
real article. American to the backbone; a millionaire who doesn't
splurge. Well," sighing regretfully, "he was born to it, and I had to
dig for mine. But I can't get it through my head why he wants to
excavate mummies when he could dig up potatoes with some profit."

"Dad, find me an earl or a duke like Mr. Crawford, and I'll marry him
just as fast as you like."

"Kittibudget, I'm not so strong for dukes as I was. Your mother will
have a black eye in the morning, or I don't know a shindy when I see
it. Now, hike off to bed. I'm all in."

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