The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [3621]
"No apologies!" the former was saying. "I don't mind the night air; I'm not so ill as that. When I'm myself again we'll have a little more talk. My compliments to your daughter, sir. I wish you a very good evening, or rather night."
The old gentleman bowed, and as he did so Sweetwater caught a glimpse (it was the shortest glimpse in the world) of a sweet face beaming from a doorway far down the hall. There was pain in it and a yearning anxiety that made it very beautiful; then it vanished, and the old gentleman, uttering some few sarcastic words, closed the door, and Sweetwater found himself alone and in darkness.
The kaleidoscope had been given another turn.
Dashing down the stoop, he came upon the gentleman who had preceded him, just as he was seating himself in the carriage.
"Pardon me," he gasped, as the driver caught up the reins; "you have forgotten something." Then, as Captain Wattles looked hastily out, "You have forgotten me."
The oath that rang out from under that twitching red moustache was something to startle even him. But he clung to the carriage window and presently managed to say:
"A messenger, sir, from New Bedford. I have been on the hunt for you for two hours. It won't keep, sir, for more than a half-hour longer. Where shall I find you during that time?"
Captain Wattles, on whom the name New Bedford seemed to have made some impression, pointed up at the coachman's box with a growl, in which command mingled strangely with menace. Then he threw himself back. Evidently the captain was not in very good humour.
Sweetwater, taking this as an order to seat himself beside the driver, did so, and the carriage drove off. It went at a rapid pace, and before he had time to propound more than a question or two to the coachman, it stopped before a large apartment-house in a brilliantly lighted street.
Captain Wattles got out, and Sweetwater followed him. The former, who seemed to have forgotten Sweetwater, walked past him and entered the building with a stride and swing that made the plain, lean, insignificant-looking messenger behind him feel smaller than ever. Indeed, he had never felt so small, for not only was the captain a man of superb proportions and conspicuous bearing, but he possessed, in spite of his fiery hair and fierce moustache, that beaute de diable which is at once threatening and imposing. Added to this, he was angry and so absorbed in his own thoughts that he would be very apt to visit punishment of no light character upon anyone who interfered with him. A pleasing prospect for Sweetwater, who, however, kept on with the dogged determination of his character up the first flight of stairs and then up another till they stopped, Captain Wattles first and afterwards his humble follower, before a small door into which the captain endeavoured to fit a key. The oaths which followed his failure to do this were not very encouraging to the man behind, nor was the kick which he gave the door after the second more successful attempt calculated to act in a very reassuring way upon anyone whose future pay for a doubtful task rested upon this man's good nature.
The darkness which met them both on the threshold of this now open room was speedily relieved by a burst of electric light, that flooded the whole apartment and brought out the captain's swaggering form and threatening features with startling distinctness. He had thrown off his hat and was relieving himself of a cloak in a furious way that caused Sweetwater to shrink back, and, as the French say, efface himself as much as possible behind a clothes-tree standing near the door. That the captain had entirely forgotten him was evident, and for the present moment that gentleman was too angry to care or even notice if a dozen men stood at the door. As he was talking all this time, or rather jerking out sharp sentences, as men do when in a towering rage, Sweetwater was glad to be left unnoticed, for much can be gathered from scattered sentences, especially when a man is in too reckless a frame of mind to weigh them. He, therefore, made but little